Power breakfast @ IMAS-Bloomberg Investment Breakfast

Takeaways from Bloomberg-IMAS conference

I recently attended an incredible conference in Singapore organised by the Investment Managament Association of Singapore (IMAS) and Bloomberg titled, “Stewarding Capital Towards New Horizons: Investing for a Greener Future.” IMAS is an organisation that has been active in enhancing the standards of professionalism amongst practitioners, advocating industry concerns, working closely with government agencies and regulators to formulate policies and strategies to grow and strengthen the asset management industry in Singapore.

I was invited to join the “Power Breakfast” with @Roy Bahat and hosted by Nitin Jaiswal session with regional leaders from media,  financial sector and private equity firms. We discussed several important topics. For example, we recognise that capital is accumulating at an astonishing pace in Asia, but there are real concerns about leaving people behind. Also, the population profile is changing rapidly and people are aging faster than ever before. We have many more productive people in the age group of 55+ than in the past. Just in these two areas, there are major implications for humanity overall. In preparation for the session, I explored these three questions.

1. What are the big shifts needed to cope with these changes from a human capital development, innovation and societal perspective? Why is it important for senior stakeholders to understand these shifts and focus on them? 
2. What role does civil society and philanthropy play to make these massive shifts beneficial to all stakeholders?
3. How can society and organizations capitalize on this pool of productive human capital? 

My takeaways from the discussion have been summarised below. 

Big shifts are needed along the human, innovation and societal axes

Southeast Asia is a paradoxical region. There are countries in hyper-growth, but also countries with stagnant economic prospects. The population is largely young, but other countries have aging population bases. Growth rates in the region are above the global average, and the region is poised to become the 4th largest economy globally by 2030. There are major changes in demographics expected. For example, Southeast Asia has a population of 660 million, almost twice the size of the United States, of which 220 million live in Indonesia alone. There are 213 million young people (aged 16-35), of which 92 million are in Indonesia. However, as a contrast, there are distinctively aging population bases in Singapore and Thailand. 

There is a widening concentration of wealth and power in Southeast Asia. The 4 richest men in Indonesia, have the same amount of wealth as the poorest 100 million people. In Thailand the top 1% control the wealth of the bottom 58% of the population. So whilst poverty has declined, inequality has not. 

Southeast Asia is at the heart of climate change. The waters in the Raja Ampat region near Papua are the richest in marine diversity in the world, containing >20% of all global flora and fauna in the region. Also, Southeast Asia also possesses the top 5 forests in terms of coverage in the world, rich with indigenous communities and local knowledge. Indonesia alone spans the entire land footprint across from the UK to Turkey. Climate change is also happening in the region. In August 2021, Singapore recorded its wettest month in 40 years. 

Southeast Asia is also has an almost 100% faith-based community, with the largest Muslim region in the world present in Indonesia. All faiths convene in the region with tremendous potential for acting for the good of all. Yet this risks fragmentation if we act counter-culture to greater participation for all. 

Behind all this lies a “curve ball”, we are in a world of unprecedented change and uncertainty with climate change, pandemics and technological innovation. We are set not to meet the SDG goals in 2030 and it might take us to 2097 to meet just some of these targets. The latest IPCC report tells us that we are expecting more severe outcomes than expected. We will be hit by more disasters in the region, possibly adversely affecting increasing inequality and prosperity for all. We are also seeing increasing polarization of society into “them and us” politics, which has been seen in Singapore and Indonesia. 

The conversations with our group centred around how to address these issues by discussing a few important changes needed.

1. Human shift. We need to see all people as powerful, and design pathways that allow for  changemaking - which is agency, creative-action for the good all i.e. employees, markets and society.  We need to think and go beyond knowledge acquisition to abilities. Skills in empathy, creative problem-solving, new leadership (beyond hierarchical models) and collaborative teamwork. We need to distribute power to the people and understand whose voices are missing, e.g., rural voices, neuro-diverse, young and old. An example of this is the introduction of Wikipedia which has an open source platform with over 100,000 volunteer groups globally producing content and fact-checking globally. 

2. Innovation shift. We need to move from product-only “Solutionitis” that solves one-thing at a time, to deploying direct capital to include social innovation and social innovators. When you move away from product solutions towards social solutions (which are addressing root-causes of the problem) - new ways of thinking emerge that focus on approaches that allow for participation of all, leverage affordability and minimize unintended consequences that concentrate market power only for a select few. 

Agency is critical and allowing for the participation of communities including last-mile solution providers is critical. Technology is increasingly able to help us to do this, which needs to be further bolstered. We need bold, innovative solutions that can solve some of the most wicked problems of our age e.g., climate change. These solutions should move away from product-led approaches to solving for wider social innovation ecosystems. 

Financial innovation and structuring will be a critical enabler. We need to see traditional economics make way for the structuring of new instruments to finance (social) innovation. A good example is what David Green, Ashoka Fellows accomplished through their work on affordable eyecare operations through Aurolab, by re-assembling cataract operations into an assembly line system. They managed to shift operations to lower cost labour, instead of having it concentrated with skilled surgeons that took too long and were too expensive. Now, poor people can get these operations for free and those with financial means can pay full market and the hospital operates at a higher margin. They have scaled widely and replicated and even mainstreamed as an approach. David Green approached Deutsche Bank to build the first multi-million Eyecare fund to provide structured finance to new solutions on the supply side. 

3. Societal shift. Acting for the mutual benefit of 600+ million people and for the common good will be increasingly important. We need to move towards new investment and economic models that allow for mutualism rather than an extractive “winner takes all” approach.  Oskar Silverdius and SOBI in Indonesia is building a collective that has multiple stakeholders and trading renewable pulp which is FSC certified. There are more examples of this kind, and the key question discussed was, “How do we get more of these types of models operating across SEA?”

Given the great paradoxes in Asia - we will need to see patterns that bring people, philanthrophy and markets together. 

The role of social innovators and philanthropists to make shifts beneficial to all stakeholders

To enable the shifts along the human, innovation and societal axes, clearly we will need to see differently, think differently and act differently.  The role of civil society and philanthropy will be increasingly important going forward. The key takeaways in this part of the discussion were:

A.Leverage bold and innovative solutions that already exist. Use the patterns from the social innovation field to learn, grow, invest and replicate. Couch surfing was founded by Casey Fenton prior to AirBnB. Philanthropy has the opportunity to underwrite these bold innovations and to go beyond seeing it as a “means to an end” but a necessary pathway for larger systemic transformation. 

B. Scale up fast, learn, improve and move on! We need flexible funds to do R&D for better innovative solutions. Hence, philanthropy potentially needs to provide more “Thinking money” for tinkering, experimentation and innovation. We need more conversations at eye-level for rapid deployment. And we need to take high-risks and allow for failures as we do in private markets. 

C. Accelerate impact from governance and ESG. We are not there yet. Policy changes and regulatory frameworks have always played “catch-up” to changes. The Citizen sector is pivotal to solving this. Social innovators can give 20/20 vision on where our blindspots exist. An example of this is ClientEarth founder James Thornton who is at the forefront of the public agenda at the pan-European level. He is using the power of the law to level the playing field between corporate and public interests. In the field of Technology, Ashoka Fellows inform us of not only the patterns of bias in AI, Data rights, Misinformation but also provide the necessary actions that can be executed on. Key questions we can ask are:

• When it comes to AI and Bias, are your engineers representative of a diverse community?
• On data rights and protection, we can ask which assets belong to the users or belong in the public domain? Are you sharing health data for greater innovation or to sequester data only for monetization purposes? What creates greater prosperity and well-being for all that is governance compliant?
• When it comes to misinformation, are you actively distributing power to all voices, implementing regulation against hoax and misinformation and aware of your own echo chambers?

New longevity as a mindset shift for the aging population as active changemakers in society

The world is aging faster and we have more productive people in the 55+ age group than ever before. Society and organizations specifically have the potential to capitalize on this large pool of productive human capital. Nitin reminded us that currently, this group does not find mention in any D&I conversations as well.

The first step is to reframe the field towards New Longevity vs. Ageing and recognise that in the United States, as many as half of today’s 5-year-olds can expect to live to the age of 100, and this once unattainable milestone may become the norm for newborns by 2050. 

We have worked closely with over 80 Ashoka fellows through the stewardship of Ashoka, Fellow Marc Freedom of Encrore.org and the Stanford Centre on Longevity. The belief is that 

“All people irrespective of age can contribute to society”. The Stanford Centre on Longevity  has launched The New Map of Life initiative. In this initiative, researchers define new models for education and lifelong learning, redesign how we work, advise new policies for health care, housing, the environment and financial security, and promote more intergenerational partnerships. It will also advance a new narrative, which redefines what it means to be “old” and values people at different stages of life. 

The other cross-cutting pattern is continued re-invention with multiple stages in life. Presently, the paradigm is to envisage life in just 4 simple stages: Birth, growth, maturing, decline stage. However, Ashoka Fellows are convinced there are as many as 10 stages and they occurring concurrently. To cope in this new paradigm of life, there are many implications, some of which have been listed below:

• Shift away  from withdrawal / obsoluence towards life-long contribution to society and markets. Bill McKibben has just launched a new movement called the “Third act” for the climate movement in the US. 
• Redefine life-long learning. We need to redirect efforts from over-investing in our youth to learn through clinical, enrichment centre models; to re-define success for the youth to engage in life-long learning to as they might be alive for 100 years. We will need to shift our overall paradigm from learning to be productive and improving utility to learning to be purposeful, creative and aspiring to be a changemaker that can change the world. 
• Alter the lens from competing for individual survival to shared financial security through mutualism. This will require the design of financial systems that allow for greater participation of all at market rates. A “Care Economy” is emerging and intergenerational models of engagement are a powerful way to unlock more innovations. 
• Do away with “medicalization of old age” to nurturing well-being throughout life. This will challenge norms, but also challenge industries like the pharmaceutical players who play a major role in influencing our attitudes towards physical and mental health.
• Own our evolving identity as we progress in life to re-invent our identity through the 100-year life. 

The IMAS-Bloomberg discussions were encouraging and fruitful. Clearly there are major opportunities ahead to shift mindsets, human capital and innovation. I was encouraged by the dialogue and am energized to continue the changemaking journey ahead.