I am seeing sooooo much buzz happening around the new emerging capital market for good through my involvement in xigi.net and goodcap.net. It gives me great confidence that "the future is here but not evenly distributed yet" as William Gibson says. For now it can be found in swarms forming around certain nests of activity:1. Socially responsible investing, the most minimal effort required by an investor who wants to screen their investments from tobacco, oil, etc...is trillions of dollars now, and the actions many more corporations are taking to improve their eco-social impact in response to client/consumer demand are increasing.
2. The rise of clean technology and microfinance as "serious" investment sectors where capital is being deployed that directly impacts ecology and society. In just 5-7 years clean tech now represents nearly 10% of all venture investments for example.
3. The increased attention that is being directed toward these kinds of models is just beginning. (see a blog i wrote and graph representing the movement of these sectors along a curve from "social trigger" to "maturity" - . This "blended value" sector is more mature than we think. Well at least there is great precedent being created.
Merrill Lynch is starting to put "blended value" investment products on their platform; More and more social MBA programs at business schools are being launched; Job sites like justmeans.com that are targeting this sector are appearing; Rating and certification entites like bcorporation.net are arising; social stock exchanges like altruistiq.com and bovespasocial.com.br are being created. In short, many pieces of market infrastructure are being put in place that blend social and financial value in what some call the emerging capital market for good. You can find a lot more at www.xigi.net which seeks to make this landscape more clear.
At the same time there is a new infrastructure unfolding empowered by our increasing ability to form groups around particular interests and activities and to take some some sort of action.
According to Frank Lacombe from the University of Calagary: "The collective intelligence of the swarm emerges in a decentralized way from the actions of individual insects responding to local stimuli from the environment and, most importantly, from other members of the swarm. There is no “boss” in charge. No individual insect grasps the big picture. Yet in the aggregate, the local actions of each insect based on the local stimuli available to it can accomplish a collective goal that serves the interests of the whole community."
There are swarms forming around various nests of "good" socio-economic activity that serve a collective goal that is now becoming more clear. The future is becoming more well distributed.
paz
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Image above from National Geographic. Swarm video by Alan Sondheim...
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