[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] Closing the Pioneer Gap -- wow, does this bring back memories!!

[R Williams]

Jim,
 
I found this to be a very interesting and informative paper.  I think of myself as fairly in touch, but I had not heard this approach to business social responsibility called "impact investing."
 
My mind went back to Bill Norris who founded Control Data Corporation, along with City Ventures and Rural Ventures, two subsidiary companies he formed which Pat Moriarity, Gary Forbes and I, among other of our colleagues, had some involvement in back in the early 80s.  In addition to these, Norris also launched Starco, an enterprise to encourage minority owned businesses, and the Minnesota Seed Capital Fund to deal to a degree with some of the issues raised in the paper.  Norris' business philosophy was, "addressing society's unmet needs as business opportunities,"  which meant that these ventures were supposed to be profitable and socially impactful at the same time.  In reflection, I am hard put to say if he personally made the transition to put social impact as the first priority over the financial bottom line.  He may have, but some of his lieutenants who ran the businesses clearly never did.
 
A key paragraph in the paper for me was the third from the last where Dichter suggests that the major barriers are an outdated ideology and a lack of imagination, and he has an insight earlier in the paper, that what's needed is a major shift in mindset.  Should that happen I think what we would see would be investors becoming systems thinkers and seeing that what is good for society in general, i.e. the common good, is in the long-run good for business as well.  The key word there may be "long-run."  Business is even yet not very good at thinking beyond the current quarter.
 
The paper does indeed bring back memories, but it addresses some very current needs.  I have to believe that if Muhammad Yunus was able to make microfinance a credible social impact tool as well as financially viable venture through Gameen Bank, then someone will be able to do something similar with impact investment as the next generation after microfinance.
 
Randy 

"Whatever the problem, community is the answer.  There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about."  Margaret Wheatley
 

________________________________
 From: James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com>
To: Judy Wiegel <judithwiegel at yahoo.com>; Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>; Order Ecumenical Community <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> 
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 7:16 PM
Subject: [Oe List ...] Closing the Pioneer Gap -- wow, does this bring back memories!!
   
The Pioneer Gap
One of the most striking findings of our research is that few impact 
investors are willing to invest in companies targeting the poor, and 
even fewer are willing to invest at the early stages of the creation of 
these businesses, a problem that we call the Pioneer Gap. 

http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/closing_the_pioneer_gap

Jim Wiegel

"Life has got a habit of not standing hitched.  You got to ride it like you find it..  You got to change with it."  Woody Guthrie


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