SDA Bocconi's Impact Investing Monitor is aimed primarily at entrepreneurs, financial institutions, asset managers and financial advisers, foundations and lending institutions, companies interested in redirecting their traditional Corporate Social Responsibility activities towards Shared Value, policymakers and public managers.
Since 2013, the SDA Bocconi Impact Investing Monitor has been a national and international facility for developing investment projects capable of combining economic and financial sustainability with the production of positive impacts on society. Thanks to SDA Bocconi's wide-ranging expertise in finance, business strategy, public management, social entrepreneurship, and sustainability, the Impact Investing Monitor aims to help define the boundaries of impact investing and how to measure its economic and social return. It also aims to analyze how impact investing can give rise to public-private and entrepreneurial partnerships by investors who are concerned about the social impact.
Participants
The Activities
The activities of the Impact Investing Monitor are based on three main pillars:
- analysis of the impact investing phenomenon, identifying best practices, and the production of scientific and informative publications to influence stakeholders
- action-oriented research reports to provide customers and partners with practical elements with which to implement impact strategies
- organization of workshops, seminars and cross-functional training initiatives for undergraduate, graduate, MBA, and specialized master students, to promote the culture and knowledge of impact investing.
Since 2013, the Impact Investing Monitor has organized three cycles of seminars dedicated to investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers. It has participated in numerous events and forums on the subject and has organized several sessions at international scientific conferences (Academy of Management and International Research Society for Public Management).
The Monitor has been engaged in providing training for SDA Bocconi Masters and Executive Masters programs and has assumed, on behalf of SDA Bocconi, the scientific coordination of the MIINT Competition dedicated to MBA students organized in collaboration with Wharton.
It has also produced several commissioned studies on the implementation of impact investing strategies and has supported the G8 Social Impact Investment Taskforce.
The Impact Investing Monitor is currently part of the scientific panel of the Social Impact Agenda for Italy.
Publications
Since 2013, the Impact Investing Monirot research team has produced several informative and scientific publications:
2018
Public-private (plural) partnership for the delivery of superior social value: the case of Social Impact Bond
2016
Principles and Practice of Impact Investing - A catalytic revolution
2015
Impact Investing: a new asset class or a societal refocus of Venture Capital?
Impact Investing: An Evolution of CSR or a New Playground?
2014
Olte Venture The First Italian Impact Investment Fund
Public Private Collaborations for Social Impact Creation
Relations between public and private actors are becoming more and more tangled and nuanced and neither public nor private sector has a monopoly on the provision of social value provision. For this reason, we need to understand how their roles have been changed and are co-changing or co-evoluting in the pursuit of social value. The paper discusses the evolving role of business in society, by analyzing how this transition is carried out in practice, and why we need to make Public Private Collaborations evolve in order to generate the innovation necessary to increase the social value generation.
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Impact Investing as a Societal Refocus of Venture Capital. The Perspective of Mature Economies
The scope of impact investing is large, embracing numerous instruments in different asset classes. Nevertheless, focusing only on that part which is based on equity investments, impact investing can be associated to the development of new enterprises which combine social impact and financial profitability thanks to the their sustainable, replicable and scalable business models in the social sector. Taking this perspective, this chapter analyses impact investing with the lenses of venture capital theory and practice showing interesting linkages between these two investment approaches. In particular, the focus of the chapter is on mature economies like Europe and the United States, where social needs to be tackled are not necessarily at the very bottom of the pyramid, where public policies still provide an answer, but they are spread across the new poor, such as young families with temporary jobs, elderly people with low pensions, unemployed workers, persons with disabilities.
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Impact Investing: A New Asset Class or a Societal Refocus of Venture Capital?
The paper discusses, for the first time ever, impact investing as a refocus of venture capital on societal impact enterprises. After an overview of the different definitions given to impact investing and a conceptualisation of its investment targets, the paper analyses the similarities and differences between impact investing and traditional venture capital and discusses the reasons for public support to the development of the impact investing market, as governments have typically done for venture capital over the last decades, and presents the Social Impact Accelerator initiative launched by the European Investment Fund (EIF).
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Case Study: Oltre Venture, the First Italian Impact Investment Fund
Through the example of Oltre Venture, the case discusses the transition from grant making/donations to Venture Philanthropy (which ask the return of the capital) and finally to Impact Investing (where the financial return is strongly combined with the social impact).
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Position Paper for G8: A Legal Focus on Equity Impact Investment Targets
What could be a way of defining and circumscribing Impact Investing sector, legally and practically? Who would profit the most in terms of functioning and efficiency? Who would be legally entitled to impact investment destined funds? This paper, prepared for the G8 international taskforce on Social Impact Investments, aims at furnishing a comprehensive framework of Impact Investment targets.
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Position Paper for G8: Government & Impact Investing
Even if their role has been less explored so far, Governments may become relevant stakeholders of the Impact Investing efforts. Undoubtedly, they are interested in its potentiality to sustain economic development, through new businesses creation and employment opportunities. This position paper, prepared for the G8 international task force on Social Impact Investments, explores the main forms of interactions between Government and Impact Investing.
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Position Paper: Impact Investing, Beyond Csr and Social Enterprise
Impact investing does not express only an investment approach, a way to attract and channel more resources into social ventures. Impact investing may be seen as a new frontier, where innovation, entrepreneurship, management, finance and public policies mix themselves to create and shape new approaches to answer community's needs. This position paper, after an analysis of the different definitions given to the concept of impact investing, gives it a broader meaning and looks at the relation with CSR and Social Enterprise theories.
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Our Approach to Impact Investing
Impact Investing, according to the SDA Bocconi approach, means scalable business models that can create economic and social value through innovation in products, services and processes, in markets such as education, health, welfare, care for the elderly, social housing once occupied predominantly or exclusively by public sector and traditional not-for-profit organizations.
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Implications For The Eib’s Sector And Lending Policy
This research project is carried out by SDA Bocconi School of Management and financed by the European Investment Bank under STAREBEI – Programme for Financing of University Research. The research draws from previous studies carried out by the EIB, most notably: the EIB Investment Report; the EIB Group Survey on Investment and Investment Finance; the EIBIS Municipal Infrastructure European Union Overview; the work by Hubert Strauss and Michael Koch about Capital stocks and (physical) Investment needs in the Education sector of the EU-28; the Economic Appraisal of Investment Projects at the EIB; EPEC’s Non-Financial Benefits of PPP. The research aims at adding further evidences to the results exposed in the 2017 Report of the High-Level Task Force on investing in Social Infrastructure in Europe chaired by Romano Prodi and Christian Sautterby developing an econometric model. Errors remain those of the author. The findings, interpretations and conclusions presented in this research are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to the European Investment Bank.
Researchers NiccoloCusumano is Associate Professor of Practice at SDA Bocconi School of Management. His research activities focus, among others, on public-private interactions, in particular in the context of public contracts, public private partnerships, impact investing. His work has been published on EGEA, Greenleaf Publishing, Palgrave Mcmillan, Environmental Science & Policy and Energy Policy. Francesca Casalini is Research Fellow at SDA BocconiSchool of Management. Her research activities focus, among others, on business-government relations for infrastructure and business development, impact investment and social innovation. She is PhD Candidate at the University of St. Gallen. Filippo Maria D’Arcangelois PhD Student at Toulouse School of Economics. He is an applied microeconomistwith a research interest in environmental economics. He holds a Masters degree from Bocconi University. Academic TutorProf. Veronica Vecchi, SDA Bocconi School of Management EIB Tutors Andreas Kappeler, Guido Bichisao, GunnartMuent and Olivier Deband.
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