Edges and connections is the principle, from Ethan Roland and Gregory Landua's 📝Regenerative Enterprise, that regenerative systems grow the quality, complexity, and connectivity of capital rather than its quantity.
Roland and Landua write that "rather than simply increasing the quantity, amount, or volume of a certain form of capital, regenerative systems develop the quality, complexity, or connectivity of capital" (p. 17). Any framework that requires ever-increasing quantities of capital, they argue, ends where the extractive economy does: in "cancer-like exponential growth," the same critique captured in 📝Growth For The Sake Of Growth. Cultivated material capital becomes handcrafted and connected to its place; cultivated living capital becomes more nutrient-dense, diverse, and resilient from the same land (p. 18).
The practical lever is edge — surface area where elements meet. In living ecosystems, the edges between habitats are rich in biodiversity, and growing the edge benefits both habitats without enlarging either (p. 18). Coral reefs are some of the most productive ecosystems because of their edge, and a tree that grew only for volume would be a spherical blob; instead it grows leaves, fractal roots, and partnerships with mycorrhizal fungi (pp. 19–20). On a farm, connection means one element's output becomes another's input, as when manure is composted rather than replaced with purchased fertilizer (p. 18).
The book's conclusion is direct: "Regeneratively cultivating capital means increasing the amount and complexity of edge, not just growing the size of the system" (p. 20). It is one of three properties of regeneration in the book, alongside cultivation over extraction and harvesting only the surplus.