Our team consists of transitions scholars, economists, innovation experts, historians and futurists, united in our ambition to understand the key drivers and patterns of large-scale societal transformation. The Deep Transitions Lab is based at the Centre for Global Challenges (UGlobe) at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) and the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex (United Kingdom).
Our work leans on decades of climate science, political action, investor frameworks and academic research. It’s immediately informed by and connected to two related collaborations between academics and practitioners – Deep Transitions and its counterpart for the public sector, the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC). Over the last five years, these projects built a global network of researchers, investors and public organisations interested in exploring and implementing a systems change perspective.
Our founder, Johan Schot, is professor of sustainability transitions at Utrecht University and a leading academic in the field of transitions studies. He is an engaged scholar who, throughout his career, has connected his research to finding solutions for the pressing challenges of our times. Schot developed an extensive programme of experimentation in which he collaborated with investors, policy-makers and governments across the world to move beyond system optimisation and achieve fundamental, lasting system change. This led to the Deep Transitions Programme, focusing on the private sector and the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC), focusing on the public sector.
The Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) is the sister project of Deep Transitions. It's a global network of researchers, policymakers and funding agencies in eight countries looking to address the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Deep Transitions set out in 2018 with support from Baillie Gifford and James Anderson. Historians, sustainability researchers and transitions experts collaborated to learn how fundamental change on a global scale unfolded in the past. From 2020 to 2022, the team collaborated with a global panel of private and public investors. The resulting Transformative Investment Philosophy was published on 16 November 2022 and presents a new approach to investment, one which targets transformation and multiple systems change.
The Global Investors Panel consists of 16 public and private investors, including from the following organisations:
The Deep Transitions project convened an unusual collaboration of historians, sustainability transition scholars, innovation experts and public and private investors who have come together to co-produce a new approach for financing transformation and long-term system change.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Get in touch if you want to hear more about what we do or start your journey towards transformative investment.
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