About
A truly unique exploration of how investors may act with deeper consideration of the meaning of money, The Purpose of Capital: Elements of Impact, Financial Flows and Natural Being, explores the historic roots of our understanding of capital, investing and wealth management, connecting how we think about finance with how we think about our lives, World and ultimate, personal purpose and impact.
Numerous books and articles tell investors how to invest better, for maximum financial returns. Other books have sought to tell investors how to invest for financial return with the generation of positive social and environmental impact. The Purpose of Capital takes the reader behind the “How” to explore the “Why” of investing.
The Purpose of Capital explores how:
- Our focus on investing as finance alone has taken us down the wrong path—and how those investors seeking to “do well and do good” have fallen prey to the notion financial return is the main driver for creating impact in the world.
Having produced seven books on the “how” of social entrepreneurship and impact investing, Emerson now turns his attention to placing investing within an historic and philosophical context, grounding impact investing within a more complete consideration of why we should invest in system change which, in the end, offers the potential for also transforming ourselves as investors and individuals.
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reviews
Charly Kleisnner
Impact Investor and Co-Founder Toniic Network
Berry Liberman
Founder, Dumbofeather Magazine
Small Giants, Family Office
Chuck Lief
President, Naropa University
Suzanne DiBianca
EVP Corporate Relations and Chief Philanthropy Officer, Salesforce
Cathy Clark
Faculty Director, CASE and CASE i3 Initiative
Duke University
Ron D. Cordes
Co-Founder, Cordes Foundation
Daniel Epstein
Founder/CEO, Unreasonable
Jason Scott
Founding Partner, Encourage Capital
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What If? The Music Video
When we first released The Purpose of Capital, Mia Haugen (my wife and journalist with deep video experience) and I thought long and hard about what kind of video we could make to compliment the ideas in the book. We shot some initial footage of me, standing on windswept Norwegian tundra, looking deep and thoughtful, which we would then use as background for my reading excerpts from the book.
The problem, of course, is that I looked ridiculous and we knew this was just not going to work!
Over Thanksgiving we visited with my brother’s family and discovered our niece, Jackie Emerson, had read and loved The Purpose of Capital. Jackie is a successful actress and musician. We realized we needed a completely different perspective on PoC—that of a 25-year old grappling with many of these same issues.
The result is Impact: The Musical!, a three minute song entitled What If? that presents the ideas and concepts explored in the book.
We believe this may be the first music video to explore the purpose of capital and are excited to share it with you!
You’ll find the Director’s cut version here (which is a more creative production of the song) and may download the Conference cut version here (which is a “cleaner” version for conferences, workshops and financial audiences).
We hope you’ll view and share these widely using #WhatIf? to tell us what YOUR vision of capital is, answering the question: What if the purpose of capital were to do more than simply make more money?
What’s YOUR #WhatIf?
Posts, Presentations and Conversations
Background
Jed Emerson has been an active public speaker for many years. In addition to a variety of regional events, he has spoken at The World Economic Forum (Davos, Switzerland), The Skoll World Forum (Oxford, England) and The Asia Pacific Impact Investing Conference (Sydney, Australia).
Over the last year, Emerson has given a series of talks, has written several posts and has participated in various podcasts. He has tried to move away from giving solo keynotes due to an awareness that the real answers we seek will come not from our debating each of our positions and promoting our approaches/writings, but rather from the space in between what each of us may currently believe.
With that in mind, this talk from SOCAP2017 is a good summation of some of the issues explored in the book (and is probably the first time you’ve seen someone actually cry while reflecting upon capital’s purpose!).
Emerson’s SOCAP2016 presentation laid the ground work for his work on purpose and meaning. It may also be of interest to you.
There are a large number of talks, writings and presentations Jed Emerson has made over the course of the past thirty years. While many may be found on line or on the Blended Value blog, what follows is a list of more current conversations and reflections I hope will be of interest to those exploring the purpose of capital and meaning of money.