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Eco Tech: Investing in Regenerative Futures
The book is a seminal contribution from a leading futurist who, over the past three decades, has explored each of the most disruptive forces shaping our world today, including emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, venture investments, and industrial manufacturing. Eco Tech brings all this thinking together, fusing insight from thought leaders with the author’s own considerable experience, to explore scenarios for 2050 and discuss eco-effectiveness as an established practice for governments, corporations, startups, and individuals.
Trond Arne Undheim begins by providing a brief history of sustainability and provides simple definitions for key terms including eco-efficiency, life cycle analysis, industrial ecology, cleantech, net zero, climate change, biodiversity, and carbon capture, which will enable the reader to engage confidently in eco-discussions. Undheim also explores the ambitions of regeneration and offers a new conceptual framework to facilitate future discussion around sustainable innovation. He applies this framework to green, ambitious startups and examines the way these ventures will lead the way towards an eco-effective society, drawing on stories from exciting founders who are already changing the world. Finally, the book takes a deep dive into emerging eco-innovations, including batteries, bioplastics, distributed energy, space tech, and futuristic megaprojects. The book contains clear directions on how to progress through adversity and avoid returning to the status quo.
The book will be an essential guide for executives, sustainability professionals, and energy tech investors who are deeply concerned with the future and are prepared to both significantly invest in it and make behavioral changes to foster regenerative development. It will also be a great resource for students and scholars of sustainable investing and innovation.
Trond Arne Undheim begins by providing a brief history of sustainability and provides simple definitions for key terms including eco-efficiency, life cycle analysis, industrial ecology, cleantech, net zero, climate change, biodiversity, and carbon capture, which will enable the reader to engage confidently in eco-discussions. Undheim also explores the ambitions of regeneration and offers a new conceptual framework to facilitate future discussion around sustainable innovation. He applies this framework to green, ambitious startups and examines the way these ventures will lead the way towards an eco-effective society, drawing on stories from exciting founders who are already changing the world. Finally, the book takes a deep dive into emerging eco-innovations, including batteries, bioplastics, distributed energy, space tech, and futuristic megaprojects. The book contains clear directions on how to progress through adversity and avoid returning to the status quo.
The book will be an essential guide for executives, sustainability professionals, and energy tech investors who are deeply concerned with the future and are prepared to both significantly invest in it and make behavioral changes to foster regenerative development. It will also be a great resource for students and scholars of sustainable investing and innovation.
216 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 23, 2023
4 people want to read
About the author
Trond Arne Undheim
12 books12 followersI write about how humans navigate technology—on factory floors, in boardrooms, and in near-future worlds that might be closer than we think.
My nonfiction work includes The Platinum Workforce: How to Train and Hire for the 21st Century’s Industrial Transitions (Anthem Press, 2025) and Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations (Wiley, 2022), drawing on research at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and my time as Director of MIT Startup Exchange, where I connected over 1,000 startups with 250 corporations.
I'm also developing a literary science-fiction thriller—a high-concept, deeply human story grounded in cutting-edge science, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and network sociology. It explores what happens when technological systems begin to press against the edges of human agency, judgment, and meaning.
Host of the Futurized podcast (500+ episodes). Former Research Scholar, Stanford CISAC (2022–2024). I hold a PhD on the future of work and technology. Based outside Boston, MA.
My nonfiction work includes The Platinum Workforce: How to Train and Hire for the 21st Century’s Industrial Transitions (Anthem Press, 2025) and Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations (Wiley, 2022), drawing on research at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and my time as Director of MIT Startup Exchange, where I connected over 1,000 startups with 250 corporations.
I'm also developing a literary science-fiction thriller—a high-concept, deeply human story grounded in cutting-edge science, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and network sociology. It explores what happens when technological systems begin to press against the edges of human agency, judgment, and meaning.
Host of the Futurized podcast (500+ episodes). Former Research Scholar, Stanford CISAC (2022–2024). I hold a PhD on the future of work and technology. Based outside Boston, MA.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 27, 2025
From the title and description I got the impression that this would be a book aimed at investors, boring and full of bank jargon. I was wrong. It is quite captivating, and it is for everyone concerned with the future of the planet and civilization. So - everyone.
It was published in 2023, before the fall of the US to Trump. The world is much worse now, and I can only hope this book will help put it back on track.
Starts with very sobering scenarios of our near future. First, the one where we are currently, where nothing is done about climate change. Then it continues with an excellent overview of the past steps towards a sustainable future, it argues convincingly that these steps have been seriously ineffective, it continues with a revision of current ideas and technology and ends with interesting suggestions for the future. I strongly recommend it to everyone on the planet.
It was published in 2023, before the fall of the US to Trump. The world is much worse now, and I can only hope this book will help put it back on track.
Starts with very sobering scenarios of our near future. First, the one where we are currently, where nothing is done about climate change. Then it continues with an excellent overview of the past steps towards a sustainable future, it argues convincingly that these steps have been seriously ineffective, it continues with a revision of current ideas and technology and ends with interesting suggestions for the future. I strongly recommend it to everyone on the planet.
June 21, 2025
good lord...this was utterly horrendous...random rambling of un related concepts and events...made 0.00 sense....how can garbage be allowed to be published?!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews