MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative

The Owning Impact Project

Investing for systems change.

Confronting the critical challenges of the 21st century demands an innovative investment strategy—one where asset owners can spark transformative change, deploy capital with a holistic vision, and make decisions based on evidence and rigorous system modeling.

The Owning Impact Project at the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative is a new research initiative that examines the role and potential of systemic investing – a nascent investment logic that asks what fundamental change is required, and how financial capital might be allocated to enable such change. Systemic investing invites us to reimagine and evolve how impact investment—and finance more broadly—can work.

Learn more about our research below.

Our latest work.

A collage of impact investing imagery: a plant growing from a pile of coins, a world map, solar panels and windmill, and financial charts

Ideas Made to Matter Why impact investors are embracing systems change

Stanford Social Innovation Review | December 12, 2023 Systemic Investing for Social Change

SSRN / October 2023 Systemic Investing to Tackle the US Food Waste Challenge

Ideas Made to Matter 3 hurdles to sustainable investing — and how to overcome them

Owning Impact research objectives:

Systemic investing, as we see it, requires mindsets, principles, practices, and infrastructures that are distinct from status quo funding and financing. To support the development of this practice, this project aims to:

Clarify ideas and terminology in the field of systemic investing.
Launch “butterfly collecting” of successful systemic investing stories (like our the REFED Food Waste case study).
Develop and elevate a taxonomy of systemic investing strategies. (Our first attempt: How Can Impact Investors Enable Systems Change? Exploring the Theory and Practice of an Emerging Field by Alban Yau)
Clarify asset allocation decisions that are made in systemic investing and their implications.
Use system dynamics analysis to support prototypes of systemic investing.

Ways to engage

Join our research team.

We're growing our research capabilities and are looking for MIT graduate students, postdocs, and visiting fellows to join our team.

Reach out to us
Share your systemic investing story.

Are you an investor or asset owner that has a systemic investing success story? We're "butterfly collecting" examples, and working to develop case studies and best practice insights for practitioners in the field.

Share your story
Enterprising family support.

For families, systemic investing means coordinating the activities of philanthropy, investing, operating company innovation, and advocacy.

We help families along this journey through programming like the Future of Family Enterprise with MIT Sloan Executive Education, Impact Investing for the Next Generation and other programs with CSP, workshops with the Family Business Network, and personalized family strategy-building sessions.

Reach out to us to learn more
Invest in our success.

If we wish to shape and shift financial systems, we need to resource multiple actions in concurrent, coherent, and adaptive ways. Interested in supporting and expanding the practice of systemic investing?

Reach out to us