Greater Good Commons

Gross National Happiness

Bhutan’s alternative to GDP, first articulated by the Fourth King in the early 1970s and written into the nation’s 2008 constitution, balancing material and spiritual wellbeing, cultural preservation, environmental conservation and good governance across nine domains.

Relationship to the Guiding StarBhutan has now spent close to two decades governing formally by this measure — one of the clearest existing proofs that all six universals can be held together at national scale, though GNH also carries a documented human-rights cost worth knowing before holding it up uncritically.

The Earth Charter

A global civil-society declaration, developed over a decade and endorsed by 6,000+ organisations in 2000, built on four pillars: respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, social and economic justice, and democracy, nonviolence and peace.

Relationship to the Guiding StarOne of the most comprehensive existing attempts to hold all six universals at once — 16 principles and 61 sub-principles, exactly the complexity the Guiding Star is trying to compress into something a person can feel in one sentence.

Rights of Nature

A legal movement, rooted in indigenous law traditions, holding that nature is not property but a living subject with its own rights to exist, regenerate and flourish — now written into law in Ecuador, New Zealand and Spain.

Relationship to the Guiding StarTakes Regeneration and extends it into law: a river or forest doesn’t just deserve protection, it has standing.

Global Flourishing Goals

Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program framework, drawn from a 200,000-person study across 22 countries, naming dignity, meaning, health and deep relationship as the measure of a life well lived.

Relationship to the Guiding StarThe most rigorously cross-cultural validation available that Purpose (named directly as “meaning and purpose") and Belonging (as “close social relationships") aren’t Western preoccupations — they test the same everywhere.

Global Commons Vision

The Global Commons Alliance and the UN Pact for the Future’s shared vision of a just world on a safe planet — Earth’s life-support systems held as shared inheritance, governed for people not yet born.

Relationship to the Guiding StarHolds Fairness across time the way the Guiding Star does — the 2024 Pact for the Future includes a dedicated Declaration on Future Generations, naming a commitment most global agreements leave implicit.

One Health

A framework formalised by the WHO, FAO, WOAH and UNEP holding that human, animal and ecosystem health are one interconnected system that cannot be separated — accelerated into global policy by COVID-19.

Relationship to the Guiding StarA scientific, technical validation of the same Health/Regeneration link Planetary Health and the Guiding Star both hold.

Declaration Toward a Global Ethic

Signed by 143 religious and spiritual leaders at the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions, grounded in the Golden Rule as it appears across every tradition: what you wish done to yourself, do to others.

Relationship to the Guiding StarEvidence that Fairness and Belonging aren’t secular inventions — they’re the ethical floor nearly every faith tradition already agrees on.

Great Law of Peace & Seventh Generation Principle

The founding constitution of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, holding that every decision must be made for the benefit of the next seven generations, and that peace, equity and the health of the whole community — including the natural world — are one condition, not three.

Relationship to the Guiding StarThe clearest existing precedent for the Guiding Star’s own conviction that Wisdom, Fairness and Regeneration test each other rather than standing apart.

One Planet Living

Bioregional and WWF’s 2003 framework: everyone, everywhere living healthy, happy lives within the limits of the planet, across ten principles from zero carbon to equity and local economy.

Relationship to the Guiding StarNames the felt outcome (healthy, happy lives) and the planetary ceiling in the same sentence — close kin to how the Guiding Star holds Health and Regeneration together.

Doughnut Economics

Kate Raworth’s 2012 model: a social foundation within an ecological ceiling, mapping twelve social minimums and nine planetary boundaries as the safe and just space for humanity to thrive in. Now used as a governance framework by Amsterdam, Copenhagen and others.

Relationship to the Guiding StarA close visual sibling to the Guiding Star’s two triangles — both test against a floor and a ceiling at once.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

17 goals, 169 targets and 232 indicators, agreed by 193 nations in 2015 — the most widely adopted global action framework ever created, aimed at reducing worst harms and building the floor of human security by 2030.

Relationship to the Guiding StarThe clearest proof that Fairness and Regeneration can be measurable, testable commitments at planetary scale — though, as Bev’s own research notes, the SDGs describe floor conditions and harm reduction, not the felt qualities of a thriving world, which is exactly the gap the Guiding Star’s Resonance Triangle is reaching for.

Eight Principles of a Regenerative Economy

John Fullerton’s Capital Institute framework: eight design principles drawn from living-systems science — right relationship, holistic wealth, empowered participation, robust circulatory flow and more — for economies that behave like healthy ecosystems rather than extraction machines.

Relationship to the Guiding StarOne of the direct intellectual roots of Regeneration as a Guiding Star universal — the question of what capacity an exchange leaves behind for what comes next, applied to an entire economy.

Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries

The Earth Commission’s 2023 Nature paper — the first quantification of safe (avoiding dangerous tipping points) and just (minimum access for all people) boundaries across climate, freshwater, biodiversity, land and pollution. Most are already breached.

Relationship to the Guiding StarGives Regeneration and Fairness a hard scientific edge — this is what “giving back more than we take” and “holding for everyone” actually measure out to, in numbers.

Earth4All

Club of Rome systems modelling naming five turnarounds needed to avoid civilisational collapse: ending poverty, reducing inequality, empowering women, and transforming food and energy systems.

Relationship to the Guiding StarA pathway model for two of the six universals at once — what actually has to move, at a systems level, for Fairness and Regeneration to hold.

Healing Systems Framework

Collective Change Lab’s 2024 framework, drawn from Maori wisdom traditions: seven cycles of change activated by four intelligences (Earth, Ancestral, Love, Future), holding that genuine transformation starts with healing collective trauma, not strategy.

Relationship to the Guiding StarOne of the direct sources behind the “Collective Wisdom, Better Together” thread running through the Change for Good Method’s own People First stage.

The World Mandala

A 12-node systems model from H3Uni for whole-system, transdisciplinary conversations about what makes community and planetary life viable, built on Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety.

Relationship to the Guiding StarThe closest sibling the research turned up to the Guiding Star’s own multi-scale claim — usable from a person to a planet — though it organises by twelve sectors rather than six felt-and-tested universals.

Worldviews of Change

Ingrid Burkett’s (The Good Shift) mapping of seven strategic worldviews people carry into change work — Progress, Cyclical, Restoration, Maintenance, Balance, Emergent and Regenerative — each with its own logic, strengths and blind spots.

Relationship to the Guiding StarUsed to pressure-test the Guiding Star itself: all six universals were checked for whether they hold up inside every one of the seven worldviews, not just the Regenerative one — they did.

Three Horizons

Bill Sharpe’s futures framework, developed with the International Futures Forum: three overlapping horizons — business as usual, transitional innovation, and the emerging future already visible in pockets today.

Relationship to the Guiding StarInforms how the Change for Good Method’s Dream Big stage reads “signals from the future” — evidence of what’s possible already showing up at the edges, before it’s mainstream.

William Ury — Possible

Harvard negotiation expert William Ury’s framework for navigating conflict and difference without requiring agreement first — finding what’s possible together even where common ground looks thin.

Relationship to the Guiding StarUnderneath the Method’s “Different and the Same” thread — honouring genuine difference while still finding the common ground that makes shared action possible.

Six Conditions of Systems Change

John Kania, Mark Kramer and Peter Senge’s framework (FSG) grouping what holds a problem in place into three levels — structural (policies, practices, resource flows), relational (power and connection) and transformative (the mental models underneath it all).

Relationship to the Guiding StarA close cousin to the Change for Good Method’s Reality Check stage: a map for finding what’s actually holding a system in place before trying to shift it.

Appreciative Inquiry

David Cooperrider’s change approach, developed in the 1980s, that starts from what’s already working — what gives a person, team or system life — and asks what more of it could look like, rather than starting from what’s broken.

Relationship to the Guiding StarThe through-line in the Method’s own “Power of Perspective” thread and in how the Method runs a room generally: naming current strengths and pockets of thriving before naming gaps.

Design Thinking

A human-centred approach to innovation, popularised by IDEO and Stanford’s d.school: understand the people affected, reframe the problem, then prototype and test solutions with them rather than for them.

Relationship to the Guiding StarUnderneath the Method’s Dream Big stage — noticing what’s already emerging as evidence of what’s possible, then designing with people rather than presenting a finished plan to them.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow’s 1943 model of human motivation: a five-tier pyramid moving from physiological needs and safety, through belonging and esteem, to self-actualisation at the peak.

Relationship to the Guiding StarAn early articulation of an idea the Guiding Star also holds — that foundations need meeting before people can reach for purpose — though the Guiding Star treats these as universals to test continuously together, not a ladder to climb once. Notably absent from Maslow’s own model: any relationship to the living world Regeneration asks for.

No official website — Maslow’s 1943 model is in the public domain.

Wheel of Fundamental Human Needs

Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef’s 1991 model: nine universal, non-hierarchical needs — subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation, creation, identity, freedom — arranged as a wheel, all equally important at once.

Relationship to the Guiding StarShares the Guiding Star’s refusal of a strict hierarchy — Max-Neef’s insight that needs are universal while their satisfiers are cultural echoes how the Guiding Star holds its six universals as one whole, expressed differently everywhere.

Tony Robbins — Six Human Needs

A coaching framework describing six needs said to drive behaviour: certainty, variety, significance and love/connection (personality needs), and growth and contribution (spirit needs) — with contribution positioned as the highest.

Relationship to the Guiding StarFeeds the Method’s “Different and the Same” thread on honouring difference; contribution as the highest need maps directly onto Purpose.

Inner Development Goals

Launched in Sweden in 2020, the IDGs name 23 inner skills and qualities across five dimensions — Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating, Acting — proposed as necessary alongside the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Relationship to the Guiding StarThe closest existing companion to the Guiding Star found in this research — the only inner-transformation framework to include both care for the natural world and inclusive decision-making alongside the inner dimensions.

Rudolf Steiner — Waldorf Education

Steiner’s holistic education model, in continuous use since 1919 across 1,200+ schools worldwide: three seven-year developmental phases moving from will and body, through feeling and imagination, to thinking and ideals — with nature as teacher throughout.

Relationship to the Guiding StarOne of the oldest sustained expressions of whole-person development the research surveyed — education as a right for every child was Steiner’s own founding premise, echoing Fairness.

MEGA SELF Framework

Michele Sayers' science-backed framework for sustained wellbeing: eight practices under MEGA (Meditation, Exercise, Gratitude, Ask for Help) and SELF (Sleep, Emotional regulation, Love and laughter, Food), grounded in the neuroscience of serotonin.

Relationship to the Guiding StarOne of the direct sources behind the Method’s “Collective Wisdom, Better Together” thread — practical daily practice underneath the bigger systemic work.

Wellbeing Economy Alliance

A global movement of organisations, carried by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and adopted by Scotland, New Zealand, Iceland, Wales and Finland, for redesigning economic systems so wellbeing is the primary purpose, not a by-product of growth.

Relationship to the Guiding StarThe same reorientation the Guiding Star asks of a person or organisation — wellbeing as the point, not the side effect — held here as a network working at the scale of national policy.

Regen Melbourne

A Melbourne-based collaborative platform, born from community research in 2021 after the Black Summer fires and COVID-19, using Doughnut Economics to guide three city-scale Earthshots — a swimmable Birrarung (Yarra) River, regenerated streets, and nourished neighbourhoods — alongside a Systems Lab researching measurement, governance and narrative change.

Relationship to the Guiding StarA working, city-scale example of Wisdom and Regeneration in practice — a whole network of organisations testing shared measures and coordinated action toward one regenerative vision, rather than any single actor working alone. Draws on Doughnut Economics and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance’s own thinking, blended with its own local research.

Bhutan — Governing by Gross National Happiness

The idea was coined by the Fourth King in the early 1970s, but Gross National Happiness only became formal government policy in 2008, when Bhutan’s new constitution wrote it into Article 9 and every law and development proposal began screening against a GNH assessment across nine domains.

Relationship to the Guiding StarDraws on Gross National Happiness. Close to two decades of a nation holding Health, Belonging and Wisdom together as constitutional policy, not just as intention on a page — though it’s also worth knowing GNH carries a documented human-rights cost, not a spotless record.

Ecuador and Bolivia — Buen Vivir Written Into Law

Ecuador’s 2008 constitution and Bolivia’s 2009 constitution both wrote Buen Vivir into national law, recognising nature (Pachamama) as a rights-holder and reframing the good life as thriving in community and with the natural world, rather than accumulation.

Relationship to the Guiding StarDraws on Buen Vivir. Belonging and Regeneration held together at the level of a nation’s founding law, not only as philosophy.

Amsterdam and Copenhagen — Governing With the Doughnut

Amsterdam adopted the Doughnut as official city strategy in 2020. Copenhagen has run it differently since 2023 — an annual “Copenhagen Doughnut” report measuring the city against the same floor and ceiling, used to guide political priorities rather than as binding policy.

Relationship to the Guiding StarDraws on Doughnut Economics. The Guiding Star’s own floor-and-ceiling logic already running as city practice, in two different forms — one an adopted strategy, the other a working trial.

Waldorf Schools — A Century in Practice

More than 1,200 Waldorf schools now run worldwide, each still following Steiner’s three-phase developmental arc, more than a century after the first opened in 1919.

Relationship to the Guiding StarDraws on Rudolf Steiner’s Waldorf Education. A century-long, worldwide test of Purpose, Wisdom and Belonging held together at a scale most frameworks never reach.

Aotearoa and Spain — Legal Rights for Rivers

In 2017, New Zealand’s Te Awa Tupua Act made the Whanganui River the world’s first river granted legal personhood; in 2022, Spain’s Mar Menor Act did the same for a lagoon, Europe’s first ecosystem to hold legal rights of its own.

Relationship to the Guiding StarDraws on Rights of Nature. Regeneration and Fairness turned into standing in court — a river or lagoon that can now defend itself in law.