Field Building: Talking Systemic Investing at the first Swiss Conference on E-mobility

Bringing a new investment logic to stakeholders at the heart of transformation

By Tom Zamzow

Systemic investing is a new investment logic for transforming human and natural systems. At the heart of this ambition sits the will, the wit, and the passion of outstanding people. We got to talk to many of them in Bern, Switzerland on the 13th of June, 2023. And we are pleased to report: the transformation is on its way in this country’s mobility sector.

The TransCap Initiative_Systemic Investing for Sustainability+1
Our panel on blending the worlds of finance and systems thinking. From left to right: Tom Zamzow (TCI), Natalia Eisele (EBG Investment Solutions), Luc Tschumper (Swiss eMobility), and Johannes Tschiderer (TCI)

We have written about the central role collaboration plays in our work ad infinitum (take a look here and here). Our system partner Swiss eMobility convened this beautiful event and made handshakes possible. Our finance partner EBG Investment Solutions brought a powerful new voice to a space otherwise dominated by technical solutions and discourse around societal and political readiness: the voice of investment as an agent of change in systems transformation.

A big thank you to everyone who was involved and the many changemakers we got to listen to and learn with.

Stay tuned, this prototype for systemic investing is moving into an exciting phase in the coming months. Think: theory of change, intervention universe, and impact framework.

On a sidenote: never underestimate the power of a multi-lingual team. We conduct most of our prototyping work in English. This event was held in German and French however and everyone on stage aced it!

The TransCap Initiative_Systemic Investing for Sustainability
Left to right: Johannes Tschiderer (TCI), Natalia Eisele (EBG Investment Solutions), Magdalena J. Schneider (TCI), Tom Zamzow (TCI)

Do you want to collaborate with us?

There is an urgent need to rethink the way we deploy financial capital for transformative impact in human and natural systems. The field of systemic investing has garnered significant momentum, and now is the time to scale deep and scale out. So we invite challenge owners, systems thinkers, innovation practitioners, investment professionals, ecosystem shapers, and creative voices to join us in figuring out how to redeploy financial capital in service of a prosperous and sustainable future for all.

How is systemic investing relevant to

Foundation

...because the pots of capital operating under a philanthropic logic are orders of magnitude smaller than those operating under an investment logic, so systemic investing is a way for foundations to leverage their capital in the systems they care about.

Corporations

...because their supply chains are becoming increasingly fragile and societal expectations of business are growing. This requires companies to deploy all the tools in their finance toolbox (incl. direct investments, advanced purchase agreements, and supply-chain financing) and partner more strategically with governments, foundations, and NGOs.

Impact Investors

...because single technologies, start-ups, or social enterprises—no matter how ingenious their solutions and how brilliant their teams—are unlikely to change systems by themselves. So what matters is that these single-point solutions are synergistically nested within a broader systems change effort.

Institutional Investors

...because mainstream ESG investing doesn’t benefit places and communities at the pace, scale, and quality required, so institutional investors must channel more capital into real-economy assets in a strategic and collaborative manner.

MDBs and DFIs

...because sustainable development in a VUCA world requires portfolio approaches to systems innovation, and those need to be funded with a different investment paradigm than those dominant in development finance institutions today. And because the public sector cannot finance sustainability transitions alone, so systemic investing is a way to crowd-in private-sector capital in a smart way.

Engage with us

Which option best describes your interest in systemic investing?

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About

Who We Are

The TransCap Initiative is a think-and-do-tank operating at the nexus of real-economy systems change, sustainability, and finance. We operate as a multi-stakeholder alliance coordinated by a backbone team and comprised of wealth owners, innovation leaders, system thinkers, research institutes, and financial intermediaries. Our community is open to anyone committed to our cause and values.

Why We Exist

We exist to improve the way sustainable finance is purposed, designed, and managed so that money can become a transformative force in building a low-carbon, climate-resilient, just, and inclusive society. We believe that the key to accomplishing this vision is to inspire and enable investors to leverage the insights and tools of systems thinking and complex systems science for addressing the most pressing societal challenges of the 21st century.

What We Do

Our mission is to build the field of systemic investing. This means developing, testing, and scaling an investment logic at the intersection of systems thinking and finance. We do that by convening a multi-stakeholder alliance to develop a knowledge and innovation base, test novel concepts and approaches, and build a community of practice.

Our core ideas borrow from the disciplines of systems thinking and complex systems science, challenge-led innovation, human-centred design, new economic frameworks, and financial innovation. Our experiments are contextualised in those place-based systems that matter most for human prosperity—such as cities, landscapes, and coastal zones—as well as in value chains and other real-economy systems. We hope that our work produces knowledge and insights, methods and tools, and a self-organising community of inspired and enabled change makers.

The places and value chains we intend to transform act as centres of gravity for our work. In each of these systems, we will work with challenge owners, communities, innovators, investors, and other stakeholders to design, structure, and finance strategic investment portfolios nested within a broader systems intervention approach.

Learn More

Contact Us

TransCap Core Team
community@transformation.capital