“We want investors to focus on system change, not system optimisation”

Due to the crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and ever-growing inequality, investing with the intention to generate positive and measurable social and environmental impact has never been more relevant. Johan Schot is Professor of Global History and Sustainability Transitions and also the founder and director of the Deep Transitions Lab, which aims to accelerate systems change with its experimentation, learning and research programmes. He explains more about the work the lab is doing on the website of Science|Business.

Deep Transitions

The Deep Transitions Lab is part of the Deep Transitions project, a collaboration between Utrecht University, the University of Sussex, and a global network of researchers from other universities. It started out by researching what they identify as the ‘first deep transition’: the immense and unprecedented changes that came about because of the Industrial Revolution, which are the root cause of the major challenges we face today. The mission of the lab is to bring about a ‘second deep transition’. This transition would subject the systems at work in our current society to a sustainable revolution, Schot says.

System change

“We want the investors to focus their investments on system change, and not system optimization”, Schot adds. If you were to take the mobility system as an example, system change would “rebuild the mobility system in completely new ways” whereas system optimisation could mean something like replacing combustion engines with electric vehicles.

Schot explains that the lab aims to answer questions around making radical change happen and hopes to establish a new practice. “What we try to say to investors is you have no choice because the shocks we’re talking about are not probable”, he says. “They’re coming.”