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.
Tag: EU
Social Investing – from Hype to Impact?
Impact investment is blossoming. What started as a fad for idealists is gradually becoming a mainstream concept often discussed by fund management hotshots and company executives. The concept itself is certainly appealing. Investors are realising that they have the possibility to help solve some of the world’s most pressing social problems and make a profit at the same time.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the old debate of whether financial markets can become a force for social good has been rekindled. For all of the buzz around it… read more >
Much is happening in the UK and in other countries. This article focuses on the European context where the EU has set as a priority social entrepreneurship and social investment. This is building of a long tradition associated with the social economy. Steps are being taken to ease cross border social investment. Originally published by Philanthropy Impact Magazine: 6 – SUMMER / AUTUMN 2014, authored by Stephen J. Barnett, Beatriz Jambrina Canseco and Karl Richter (Euclid Network)
The Welfare State is dead – long live the Kinky State
I don’t mean the type of adulterous scooter socialism enjoyed by French President Francois Hollande – I mean an agile and nimble State that is deftly able to do more with less. Kinky like an inflection point in a trend line. Kinky as in ‘crinkled’ and ‘intertwined’ and ‘complex’ and ‘strikingly unconventional’. Kinky like talk about the rise of smart power in a multi-polar world – because this is the new practical reality, not because the laissez-faire types won the ideological debate about the size of the state. Quite the contrary, it’s dangerous to mistake coincidence for causality.
Social investing : fixing capitalism with capitalism
Capitalism – in its current form – has let us down. We have seen this truism manifest itself globally, from the disruptive protests of the “Occupy” movements to mainstream debates such as Capitalism in Crisis, the in-depth series that the Financial Times ran at the beginning of 2012.
#OccupyLSX camp outside London Stock Exchange/ St Paul’s Cathedral in 2011 (image digitally altered from original)
The Future of Economic Governance in the EU: And where does this leave Britain [and the other 26]?
“The real issue at stake is how the EU can maintain its influence and its relevance in a changing world”, said Lord David Howell, UK Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in his keynote speech of the conference. “There is no distinction between Eurozone and non-Eurozone members at all”.
Karl H Richter 