21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change

Two experienced and visionary authors show how institutions and individuals can go beyond conventional and sustainable investing to address complex problems such as income inequality and climate change on a deep, systemic level.

It's time for a new way to think about investing, one that can contend with the complex challenges we face in the 21st century.

Investment today has evolved from the basic, conventional approach of the 1950s. Investors have since recognized the importance of sustainable investment and have begun considering environmental and social factors. Yet the complexity of the times forces us to recognize and transition to a third stage of investment practice: system-level investing.

In this paradigm-shifting book, William Burckart and Steve Lydenberg show how system-level investors support and enhance the health and stability of the social, financial, and environmental systems on which they depend for long-term returns. They preserve and strengthen these fundamental systems while still generating competitive or otherwise acceptable performance.

This book is for those investors who believe in that transition. They may be institutions, large or small, concerned about the long-term stability of the environment and society. They may be individual investors who want their children and grandchildren to inherit a just and sustainable world. Whoever they may be, Burckart and Lydenberg show them the what, why, and how of system-level investment in this book: what it means to manage system-level risks and rewards, why it is imperative to do so now, and how to integrate this new way of thinking into their current practice.

About the Authors

William Burckart leads the Investment Integration Project (TIIP). He is also a fellow of the High Meadows Institute and member of the advisory council of the Investments and Wealth Institute's WealthBoard 100. Burckart previously founded or cofounded two impact investment advisory firms, Burckart Consulting and Impact Economy North America.

Steve Lydenberg is the founder of TIIP and also serves as partner, strategic vision, of Domini Impact Investments. Lydenberg was a cofounder of KLD Research and Analytics Inc. and served as its research director from 1990 to 2001. From 1987 to 1989, he was an associate with Franklin Research and Development Corporation (now known as Trillium Asset Management).