Navigating Deep Transitions
Guiding a transformative system change
Deep Transitions is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary research initiative aimed at comprehending the emergence of unsustainable systems in our societies and exploring ways to dismantle them. It involves an unparalleled historical inquiry into how fundamental shifts occurred in the past and anticipates the future to guide these crucial drivers of change towards sustainability. Thus, Deep Transitions draws on the lessons of the past to shape a sustainable future.
The project combines an historical analysis of how fundamental changes unfolded in the past with looking into the future to help redirect those crucial drivers of change into a sustainable direction. The project team worked with a group of private and public investors to develop a new Transformative Investment philosophy, which was published in November 2022. To effectively address the ongoing crises and achieve a sustainability revolution, we must embrace system change and radically change the way we invest. While Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment practices may yield positive results, they often do not result in fundamental transformations. Deep Transitions advocates for Transformative Investment as a novel approach that amplifies positive impact within multiple systems. This philosophy is the outcome of a 2-year collaboration between the Deep Transitions research team – comprising historians, sustainability transitions scholars, and futurists – and the Global Investors Panel consisting of 16 public and private investors from across the globe.
Following the launch, the Deep Transitions Lab opened in October 2023. Using the Transformative Investment Philosophy, the lab aims to establish a niche in the finance industry and contribute to its scaling. The lab helps organisations move away from a case-by-case focus that favours system optimisation and instead directs investments towards the root causes of unsustainable practices that increase social inequality. Learn more about Deep Transitions.
One of the biggest challenges for sustainable finance is the risk that it satisfies itself with incremental change, while reproducing the harmful foundations of mainstream, or “unsustainable”, finance. For example, by failing to reorient its goals away from private profit maximization towards social and ecological flourishing.
Highlights
The Deep Transitions Lab: experimentation program
The DT Lab runs an experimentation program, executed with partners from the investment industry, to build practical skills, knowledge and experience in implementing Transformative Investment in their organisations. The experiments also aim to uncover (and even create) new investment opportunities in overlooked areas with high transformative potential. In 2024, the Lab completed two experiment case studies with The Good Investors and Baillie Gifford. Read more.
The Deep Transitions Lab: learning program
The Lab has a training and outreach program, which aims to create a global network of investors, policy makers and academics. The learning program will build knowledge, foster mutual learning and provide training and capacity-building to practitioners, as well as for the next generation. In December 2024, the Lab built a learning hub pilot offering tools, materials and methods for investing in systems change.
Meet our team:
Project leader
Team members
Contact
For more information please contact the project assistant: Nicky Wunderlich, n.wunderlich@uu.nl.
Partners
We currently collaborate with both private and public investors, the former ranging from small family endowment offices and impact investors, to multi-billion-dollar pension and other funds (such as Baillie Gifford). We anticipate over the coming years to continue working with investors of all types, as well as engaging with a wider range of other partners, including social movements and firms. We’re starting up a project with Oxfam that looks at the relationship between investing and activism and social movements.