Morning Keynote and Plenary: “Silver bullet” or “silver buckshot”?

In some ways, Katherine Fulton’s keynote and the plenary discussion that followed were the intellectual core of this conference. In some ways, both were trying to answer the question: “Just how real is this new 'social capital market,' and where is it going?”

Fulton began by exploring what she sees as a convergence of forces, including: money seeking diversification, values-driven investors and consumers, growing inequity, environmental crisis, and more. The question is whether the market can “take off” or whether it will stay niche?

By way of example, she provided a framework of industry evolution that ran from uncoordinated innovation, to marketplace building, to capturing the value of the marketplace to maturity, and reminded the audience that it had taken microfinance decades to get all the way through marketplace building.

Fulton warned that the growth of the social capital market could be too hard or too easy. Too hard in the sense that there is an insufficient compensation for risk, there may not be enough good deals, execution might prove to be too difficult, and finally that hype creates a bubble. Too easy in the sense that incentives create a major pull toward “greenwashing” and the very premise of having positive impact could by undermined and the industry discredited.

Finally, she shared a number of converging actions that can drive the social capital market emergence ranging from new lobby’s to change government structures to new forms of funding for organizations to scale and grow.

Following Fulton, a panel with Jed Emerson, Matthew Bishop and David Chen continued to explore a similar set of questions. I gotta say, while Matthew and David were great, Jed has an excitement for the space that is both passionate and no-bullshit. He's an essential voice for helping us remind ourselves why we’re here, but also to not take ourselves too seriously. In fact, one of the thoughts he left us with is that to keep the world of social change moving forward, we sometimes need to take a step back from our own egos and perceptions, and recognize that none of us individually has the exact right answer.

Emerson suggested that we’re not looking for a silver bullet; we’re looking for silver buckshot: the package of proven strategies and approaches that make sense for the problems they’re seeking to address.