Transformative Investment (2024)

Are we heading for a breakdown or a breakthrough?

Deep Transitions

Bringing about a just and sustainable world

Together, we face a choice: breakdown or breakthrough? How we respond now to the cascading crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and growing inequality will determine the future. Business-as-usual will result in catastrophe, but there is an alternative. To avoid disaster we must embrace system change and radically change the way we invest. In a collaboration between sustainability experts, academics, innovators and public and private investors, the Deep Transitions team produced a response to this challenge: Transformative Investment. This is practiced at the Deep Transitions Lab, where we run experiments, develop tools and metrics, conduct research and grow a community of practice.

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Mission

To mobilise and inspire a transformation in the way we invest, ultimately seeing Transformative Investment become the norm. Grow a community dedicated to innovation, experimentation and real-life action, in close collaboration with our partners. Our mission is to establish a niche in the finance industry and contribute to its scaling.

Vision

To shift investment away from innovations that optimise and reinforce our current unsustainable systems. Instead, we want to unleash the transformative power of capital by redirecting investment towards multiple systems change – bringing about a deep transition, where the world develops according to just and sustainable principles.

Transformative Investment

Shifting Investment Practices

Deep Transitions thinking is grounded in academic research. It explains how change unfolded in the past in order to learn how to shape the future. A Deep Transition is a series of interconnected system changes that transforms society in a fundamental way. Our current world runs on the systems that were created 250 years ago with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. However, the rules that underpin this world are the root causes of the major challenges we face today, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and social inequality. The lab aims to help us move towards multiple system change, which is paramount if we want to see a just and sustainable future.

To the labTo research

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12 principles, one mission

The Deep Transitions Investment Philosophy contains 12 principles to create systemic impact. Socio-technical systems providing basic needs, such as energy, mobility and food, are currently based on unsustainable practices such as fossil fuel dependency, globalisation and mass production. Transformative Investments are long-term investments that trigger multi-dimensional change, and remake the rules of one or more socio-technical systems. The 12 principles guide this process.

Goal SettingPrinciples to set the course and catalyse thinking on how to make Transformative Investment part of your organisation.Investment StrategyPrinciples that support the decision-making process when developing a strategy for investing in transformation.Investment ProcessPrinciples that can help inspire, shape and stretch the investment process of your organisation

Goal Setting

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Investment Strategy

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Investment Process

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Sharing & Learning

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Who we are

The Deep Transitions team is a group of transitions scholars, economists, innovation experts, futurists and professional staff, united in our ambition to make transformative investment a reality and be part of the push towards a sustainable and inclusive future. Our network stretches the globe: we are active in both private and public sectors with our sister project Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) focused on policy making and funding.

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Testimonials

Insights from leading Deep Transitions panellists and researchers

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Impact and ESG investment practices are bringing very positive developments to the industry. However, certain dominant practices often favour system optimisation rather than deeper and more fundamental societal transformations. These include, for example, short-term focus, narrow interpretation of fiduciary duty, rigid asset class distinctions, backward-looking risk management, and incentives structures. To support global net-zero targets or the trajectory stipulated in the Sustainable Development Goals, we need to change the way we invest. Investments need to contribute to long-term system change. Currently, ESG investors often lack the tools and assessment practices to evaluate investments based on their transformative potential.

Roberta Benedetti del Rio

Co-chair of the Global Investors Panel and Senior Advisor to Just Climate

Investment is an incredibly powerful tool and we urgently need to scale up investment to fully fund socio-technical system change. Socio-technical systems provide basic needs, such as energy, mobility, and food. They dictate everyday behaviour, from our modes of transport to the food we consume and the values we hold. Currently, these systems are based on unsustainable practices such as fossil fuel dependency, globalisation, linear mass production and mass consumption. Transformative Investments are long-term investments that trigger profound multi-dimensional change which ultimately leads to remaking the underlying principles of one or more socio-technical systems.

Johan Schot

Founder of the Deep Transitions project and co-chair of the Global Investors Panel

Participating in this project allowed for constituents from the public, private and academic spheres to opine on what successful systems level change could look like and how to best implement it. Collaborating with this group on sharing our findings via the investment philosophy will allow others to see how they may implement systems level change in their own organisations. Our multi-asset impact investing portfolios will attempt to do just that.

Dimple Sahni

Managing Director Impact Funds Portfolios at Anthos Fund and Asset Management

Starting from where we want to be as a society and reflecting on how current innovation niches can get us there to then try and figure out what our investment strategy should look like has been an incredibly valuable exercise.

Sanjoy Sanyal

Senior Advisor to Caspian Debt

A History of Transitions, Transformations & Sustainability

In Deep Transitions we learn from the past to shape the future. Journey through the foundations that have made Transformative Investment possible.

The journey towards investment for system change

Investment shaped the world we live in today and it has enormous potential to create a sustainable and just future.

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2012

January

Interested in learning the full history of Deep Transitions?

We describe every milestone since the first Deep Transition that started this global meltdown several 100 years ago.

Discover the Full Story

Let's talk

Get in touch if you want to hear more about what we do or start your journey towards transformative investment.

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