10 Years of Impact & Innovation
I am “surprised”… [by many things including, how much a good coffee can cost (without coffee design art), that we still have pointless wars, the impact on speculation on return etc.] but today, by the realisation that the boutique ESG & Impact advisory firm I founded is 10 years old… this month!
As I reflect on the successes and failures (yes there have been many failures often disguised as “pivots”, not to mention maybe being 5 years too early to the sector ;-) ), I think maybe the learnings from 10 years of ESG/ impact innovation are most important to share. Please look out for 10# posts addressing 10 learnings arising from me founding a unique social enterprise specialising on ESG/ Impact Advisory and the scaling of the marketplace.
We have been fortunate enough to have supported/ worked with numerous leading commercial corporate organisations and in our view contributed in our actions and learning to this transition we are all seeing.
Leaning #1 Everyone has a Plan after the Fact
With any end or high point, we are all inclined to find the shortest retrospective path to that point when looking back... a straight line, a clean narrative. However, my experience has been anything but linear in trajectory even though it may appear that way to external observers.
Prime Advocates now is clearly defined as a specialist ESG & impact advisory firm (providing strategy, ESG / impact policy curation and ESG assurance) and a leading social/ impact finance boutique law-firm. We provide these services to leading corporates, asset managers/ owners and systemic change-makers.
However, when I started Prime, there was “no plan” – emphasis “no plan” for it to be a permanent full-time business, but rather I sought a way to:
i) Be further involved in this burgeoning section that provided “profit, people & planet” support with market returns – impact investing;
ii) Leverage my expert structured finance legal expertise (established from advising directors at leading financial organisations like JPMorgan, Bear Stearns and Weil); and
iii) Support the market need I saw for innovative commercial legal finance acumen to support philanthropy.
This seemed logical and necessary at the time. I wanted to support this new thing called “impact investment” as it aligned with my values and passion for business. Also, the philanthropy model of “giving only” was struggling to solve the scale of our problems. Donation pools were down, and philanthropic organisations needed help to understand how structured finance could support their impact missions.
I certainty got a lot of traction in 2012, and never returned full-time to the traditional institutional legal advisory roles I held before. Although, contrary to my market research our initial clients did not come from the World’s leading Foundations / Charities – we did not become an Imprint Capital of the legal world; except for the work I did for Cirque Du Soleil’s founder’s Foundation – One Drop in our early years. We supported and continue to support large corporates, professional services firms, funds/ asset owners and scaling social enterprises.
# Don’t fight the tide (if you are executing well, but the demand is elsewhere)... if your purpose and market need is elsewhere – accept it. But good ideas sometime take a little time to mature.
Short learning Conclusion:
Let purpose be your guide: It is a total cliché, but we are fortunate enough to have choices. Although such choices appear harder than they truly are [as often the right choices are more limited than think], determining where we exert our limited resources (of intellectual capital or financial resources). I am not advocating for dramatic or abrupt changes… but consideration of alignment in work and business values with expertise and person/ human values. Great things can come about from this core work alignment.
Furthermore: the application of business strategy to personal self-knowledge and understanding (know thyself) is key. Alignment of market requirements and the firm’s/ personal founder’s or team’s non-monetary needs are core. This can be a bedrock of success. Purpose/ intentionality [ as to what impact is sought] can be used as a guide to some of the more challenging business decisions you face. The application of “purpose” or “internationality” within the acumen of business innovation are themes that drive me[once I finally accepted this concept – rather then trying to be the best as recognised by monetary pay]. I think purpose will/ is driving business innovation in the markets; as we all shall need to find solutions to the world’s existential crisis: climate change and sustainability (including socio-economic disparities and inclusion). Personally this alignment of purpose and business applied for example, as Prime Advocates remains a not-for profit allows us to collaborate with leading law-firms (being non-competitive) and NGOs to drive unique social finance systems change, see our pro bono platform: www.socialfinancehotdesk.com. The oddity of our not-for profit status is also one of our supers, allowing us to remain at the cutting edge of climate finance innovation (exceeding our human capital resources, leveraging our expertise). Yet, this structure hinders us from obtaining direct scaling investment. Everything has its pros and cons, but hold on to the core values that are dear to you!
Anthony Murphy, Managing Director at Prime Advocates