Embedding fungal intelligence in business
An interview with BUNS magazine about fungi as a model for innovation, systems thinking, and regenerative futures.
Image description: Two images overlaid. In the foreground, a blue-tinted photograph of a female hand holding an upside-down gilled mushroom cap. In the background, a photograph looking up at autumnal tress against a clear blue sky.
Hi everyone,
This week’s work: how to embed fungal intelligence in business.
The curse of the solo founder is wearing too many hats. I’m a futurist, researcher, strategist, amateur mycologist… “entrepreneur” has never shown up in my CV.
So Sporesight’s mission — to embed fungal intelligence into business to shape more sustainable futures — is weirdly a lot easier to do for clients’ businesses than my own 🙃 Can you relate?
It helps when other brains ask pointed questions. Data Humanist, Insight Researcher and fellow Futurist Alice Avallone of the BUNS platform was that person this week.
In her interview (below in English; original here in Italian), we unpack how to embed fungal intelligence in business, and how mushrooms can inspire us to think differently about strategy, innovation and becoming good ancestors.
Click here to read the article on BUNS in Italian.
I'm feeling all the feels! Grateful, proud, shy, shining. Hope you enjoy.
Yours in spores,
Jess
Founder Sporesight
BUNS is an independent Italian platform offering free, future-oriented content for people working in communication, creativity, and culture. Through a mix of insight research, data humanism, trend forecasting, and futures thinking, BUNS explores how society is changing — and how we can imagine what comes next. It’s a space for those who want to slow down, think deeper, and stay inspired.
Embedding fungal intelligence in business
By Alice Avallone
In an age where the word “innovation” is thrown around as often as we refresh our feeds, it’s easy to forget that true transformation doesn’t always come from screens, data dashboards, or corporate brainstorms. Sometimes, it starts in the forest. Quiet. Slow. Underground.
This is the world of Jess Jorgensen, a strategist, researcher, and foresight consultant who has spent over two decades helping more than 200 global brands connect with consumers and culture in meaningful ways. But after years in the fast lane of brand strategy, something deeper was calling: a desire to work not only for people and the planet—but with them.
Her answer? Mushrooms. Or more precisely: fungi as a model for innovation, systems thinking, and regenerative futures.
Jess set off on a world mushroom research tour—a quest that took her out of the boardroom and into the woods, the labs, the fields, the fermentation rooms. There, she explored how fungi connect, adapt, and thrive—not as individuals, but as complex, interdependent ecosystems. It wasn’t just fascinating science. It was a blueprint for how we might reimagine business itself.
That journey became the seed for Sporesight, the consultancy Jess founded to integrate fungal intelligence and foresight thinking into business strategy. Sporesight doesn’t just talk about nature—it works like it. Think: decentralized networks of collaborators (à la mycelium), sliding scale pricing that reflects mutual value, and immersive “field trips” where clients literally go into the woods to meet mushrooms and mushroom experts—not just metaphors, but methods.
Jess’s approach is refreshingly radical. She doesn’t believe in competitors, only collaborators. She views innovation as something that grows through reciprocity, not extraction. She invites businesses to stop speeding up and start tuning in—to the land, to culture, to community, to the deeper rhythms that fungi have followed for millennia.
She also serves as Vice Board Chair of the Hodari Foundation, and brings a holistic, cross-disciplinary mindset to everything she touches—from ethnographic research and insight mapping to systems change and social impact.
At a time when business as usual feels increasingly unsustainable—and uninspired—Jess offers an invitation to think otherwise. To root ourselves in complexity. To build resilience from below. To design futures that are more entangled, more ethical, and more alive.
We spoke with her about the business lessons hiding in the forest, why mushrooms are the ultimate futurists, and how she’s using spore-based strategies to grow something entirely new.
Welcome, Jess. You've transitioned from traditional strategic insights to founding Sporesight, where fungi play a central role. Can you share the 'aha' moment that led you to intertwine mycology with business foresight?
JJ: Thanks Alice. My ‘aha’ moment was meeting mycelium. The word ‘myceliummmm’ tingled in the gut, as I saw, clearly, that it is critical to nature’s survival as it connects and sustains ecosystems.
I was privileged to grow up in the Western Cape mountains, surrounded by South African fynbos, and have long pondered the human x nature detachment. Society today tends to see ourselves as apart from, more significant than, and more intelligent than nature; an ego-centric view which leads to dominance, taming, extraction and destruction. But we are nature. As we destroy our environment, we destroy ourselves.
Meeting mycelium led me to believe that nature deserves a seat at every boardroom table, via mycelium. It’s the foundation of all life, societies and economies… how can it not?! This was the first spore of Sporesight.
Fungi are known for their regenerative properties. How do you incorporate this concept into Sporesight's consultancy practices to promote sustainability within the organizations you work with?
JJ: I’m glad you asked about this; it’s a fun one. We look at the full spectrum of sustainability: from net-zero to regenerative. Fungi, too, operate on a spectrum: not only are they nature’s greatest decomposers, but also regenerative and carbon sinking.
After unpacking future scenarios with our clients, we sprinkle in a fungi framework to inspire initiatives and action. Here are 3 quick examples:
Fungi are ‘net zero’ as they break down organic matter fully, leaving no waste. How can a streetwear brand grow mycelium-based leather jackets, or FMCG grow mycelium packaging, which decomposes naturally?
Fungi are regenerative, renewing forests and ecosystems by transforming organic debris into fertile grounds for new plant life. How can a drinks company source ingredients from regenerative agriculture, à la Patagonia?
Fungi are carbon sinks, as mycorrhizal fungi help plants capture and store carbon underground. How can a coffee shop use mycelium panels on its facade, which absorb CO2 during production? My favourite example of this is Italian Furf Design Studio’s mycelial facade for Crema Lab café in Brazil. Lots of interesting mycelium innovation coming out of Italy!
Your pricing model includes a sliding scale to ensure accessibility. How has this approach influenced the diversity of clients you work with, and what insights have you gained from serving such a varied clientele?
JJ: We haven't yet put this into practice, but it’s exciting! Market research and applied strategic foresight/ futures can lead to exponential growth, but can be financially inaccessible for start-ups and SMEs who might not have Big Corp budgets.
Our model invites mushroom businesses to access foresight collectively: rather than pricey bespoke foresight, we offer a collective buy-in with cost shared between multiple mushroom businesses (across fungi food and cultivators, materials like mycelium packaging and leather, health and wellness, functional mushroom drinks and snacks, and more). I’m hoping to encourage collaboration over competition here: imagine if competitors strategically defined unique and mutually beneficial roles for each other in their own industries!
We’ll pilot the model in Europe and the UK with our first Spore-report about Our Fungal Futures, to be released in May/June. Fingers crossed.
Mushrooms have a unique way of connecting ecosystems. How do you draw parallels between fungal networks and human organizational structures to enhance connectivity and resilience in businesses?
JJ: Mycelium has no brain, central governing body, operational centre or capital city. Decisions are decentralised – made everywhere all at once. Mycelial networks distribute resources across huge distances, ensuring survival even when parts are damaged.
Decentralisation can be powerful in organisations. Imagine if companies were brave enough to allow information centres on every level at every point?
Empowering employees at all levels can lead to more agile decisions than top-down control. Spotify and Haier, for example, use autonomous teams (“squads” or “micro-enterprises”) to make rapid, data-driven decisions without bottlenecks.
Your journey included a world mushroom research tour. What was the most surprising lesson you learned from fungi that businesses can apply to navigate today's uncertainties?
JJ: If mushrooms can grow from shit, so can your insights. Ha! Just kidding, although that was a fun one.
The most surprising lesson was how simple it can be, and how fundamentally important it is, to operate regeneratively. To nourish, not deplete. To act with reciprocity over extraction.
These ways of working are not out-of-reach, inaccessible, or too expensive for corporations to embrace. We can all become a bit more fungal and live in a world where profit and ethics co-exist.
Looking ahead, how do you envision the principles of fungal intelligence reshaping the future of business strategies and organizational development in the next decade?
JJ: As consumers increasingly reject extractive capitalism, we’re in for an interesting near future. In Our Fungal Futures report we’ll explore future mycelial scenarios in detail, unpacking how businesses will be facing an environment defined by growth, discipline, transformation or collapse.
If an organisation realises its power to shape their future, as opposed to letting it happen to them, my hope is that they choose to become more fungal, opting for regenerative transformation to avoid collapse.
