Notes from Katapult Future Fest, Investor Day, for the Misfits of Finance Finance is a way of carrying the world by leaving most of it out. Reducing the noise is the skill. It is the first thing you are taught, and there are consequences for questioning it. Portfolio is an Italian word. Portafoglio, from portare, to carry, and foglio, a … Read More
While We Wait
There is a particular hunger loose in the impact investing world right now, the desire to measure everything. There’s a claim to want to understand it, but only when all that we know can be rendered countable, to fix a number to every action so the number can be billed, ranked, optimized. The token is the smallest expression of it. … Read More
The Donella Meadows Bingo Card
What happens when institutional investors become systems-conscious? There is a book that circulates in certain rooms.1 It has been on my syllabus since I first started teaching, 17 years ago. It moves the way useful tools move, from hand to hand, without ceremony. Back when she was known as Dana, Meadows wrote it for people watching systems fail while the standard … Read More
The Shape of the Curve
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” -Gramsci Everyone quotes Gramsci now. It has become the default frame for this moment, a preferred sign-off on an email signalling that you know there is a collapse of the liberal order, … Read More
Leverage Points Aren’t What We Think They Are
On Mechanistic Metaphors Systems thinkers love to talk about leverage points—those magical places where a small intervention supposedly yields outsized change. The image is always mechanical: a bar, a fulcrum, a decisive push. But that metaphor smuggles in an assumption: that the world behaves like a machine waiting for the right force in the right place. As Derek Cabrera recently … Read More
The Tale of Two (2) Three (3) Horizon Ideas
On forecasting, portfolios, and futures “We need to spend more time on Horizon 2,” they both say. One is a program officer at a climate and nature philanthropy. The initiatives they’re funding risk being captured by the dominant political economy in the U.S. or co-opted by greenwashing actors who sound like they are marching toward progress but are aggressively resisting … Read More
Narrative, Valuation, and the Material Power of Finance
“Narrative change” has become its own sphere in philanthropy and movement work, stories as culture, identity, and legitimacy. Narrative work is funded. Those with the best narratives attract funding. There’s even been a backlash against narrative-building, and last week I had a set of compelling conversations thanks to Julia Roig’s post on Judith Mil’s post, a materialist critique of narratives. … Read More
Outcomes Will Be Contested
Performing Economic Realities: Climate Week on Value, AI, and the Contest Over Contribution My worlds all collided at Climate Week, and it’s taken me another week to metabolize the bafflement of many and find the corners of coherence, trying to remember more than the variation of seating charts, convening experiences, and which rooms were set to Arctic tundra versus tropical … Read More
Who Shapes the Machine Dreams
A story about unimaginative visions for efficiency and who gets to decide what intelligence serves. The machines are learning. But not what you think. The machines are learning how to hollow out human work and pour the profits into distant accounts. The machines are learning the language of efficiency, which means “we don’t need you anymore.” The machines are learning … Read More
The Double-Edged Sword of Outcomes-Based Models
A compelling narrative is emerging in business and finance: a shift from funding effort to paying for results. On the surface, outcomes-based models, results-based finance, and impact-linked finance appear to be a logical evolution toward greater efficiency and accountability. This approach, however, is not a panacea. It’s a complex tool whose application merits careful critique, as it can create as … Read More