Erinch Sahan

Impact investors must wrestle with an uncomfortable truth: social and ecological crises have deepened and become more entrenched in the years that impact investing and sustainable finance have grown in prominence. Our idea was radical when the term “impact investing” was coined 20 or so years ago, but the tools we have developed as a field have largely failed to scale or radically change traditional financial market architecture. Ours instead have mostly tried to fit in.

Starting and running a business is hard. And it’s especially tough when the business is also focused on social and ecological goals. There’s the reality of commercial and operating pressures, pushing you to grow sales, manage costs, improve products and services, and innovate.

‘Deep enterprise redesign’ – transforming the underlying structures of who holds power and toward what end in business – is the new frontier of sustainability, and the beginning of the end of shareholder primacy, say Marjorie Kelly, Kate Raworth and Erinch Sahan.