The Aggregate Confusion Project at MIT has done a great job of analysing why there is a tremendous divergence between different sources of impact data (sustainability data). They conclude that the biggest contributing fa…
Three long-term economic trends all point towards zero: 1- official interest rates (5,000 years); 2- dividends from stock markets as a proportion of total returns (70 years); and 3- economic growth rates (2,000 years). W…
To find the answer, we need to go back to the origin of the word “data”. ‘Etymology can give a startling new perspective on many of the phrases we frequently toss around in business’, says Gillian Tett in her FT column L…
Sumptuous Accounting™ is an intellectual provocation, taking a light-hearted approach to a very serious issue – fixing capitalism. The working paper Sumptuous Accounting™ uses the sci-fi genre and a story-telling narrati…
Money, finance and capital markets are social constructs that have ostensibly evolved for societal purpose. Yet paradoxically finance and enterprises that intentionally target social returns need to be prefixed with the …
Below are the slides of the keynote address that I gave at the 9th Annual Social Responsibility Forum , IE Business School (Madrid, Spain). If the presentation does not load, you can find the original here .
Because one always wants to remember the first time - below is a transcript of my first live TV interview. I was asked to explain social enterprise, social investment and EngagedX in 2 minutes...
Discussing the opportunities and challenges of bringing together finance and social investment. Social investment is still a small market segment but has tremendous potential. There are more investors who are looking for…
A committed fiscal conservative like UK Chancellor George Osborne was never going to deviate from Government’s hard-wired policy of austerity. Nobody really expected a change of course in his 2013 Budget , not even after…
Tomorrow (5 Dec) in Brussels I will be presenting my views on the impact measurement discourse at a conference on "Measuring the Social Impact of Social Enterprises". My approach will be to explore how to frame…
I recently went to Washington to learn about the new global impact economy being advocated by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and specifically to find out whether it is aligned with social business and social inve…
Is the social usefulness of financial instruments misunderstood in a similar way to how, in the darkness, **the aspiring animal musicians _ in the folktale **_ Town Musicians of Bremen are mistaken for being a witch? Fin…
The underlying reasons for this apparent feral behaviour are complex and individual motivations will vary, but there are some underlying psychological themes which may help us understand why the rioting was so contagious…
The Taskforce for a European social investment bank/ fund/ facility will be launched in Krakow, September 2011 (organised in cooperation with the Euclid Network (of European civil society professionals))
Social investing (equivalent to impact investing) encompasses such an increasingly broad range of financial activities and products, that some of it may be considered investment banking for the social sector. Examples in…
Featuring Charles Darwin, Ayrton Senna, Strawberry Fields, Steven Hawking, Shaka (King of the Zulus), Steve Wozniak and Karl Marx. There is a healthy dose of blue-sky thinking in this article. I have included some provoc…