A Biosphere Agenda for Social Investors

Alejandro Litovsky

June 11, 2010

Social investors and foundations have a role to play in supporting the scaling up of an economy that stewards the long-term interests of humanity, what we’ve called the Biosphere Economy.

In June 2010 I’ve presented some of the ideas to a few thousand foundations and social investment funds as the guest editor for the Alliance magazine–the leading publication for the philanthropy and social investment community worldwide. The article, “Governing the Biosphere Economy”, tackles some of the fundamentals for social investors interested in issues of scaling tomorrow’s economy.

This special feature of the Alliance magazine includes interviews and contributions with Niklas Zennstrom, founder of Skype; Richard Branson of the Virgin Group; Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Gates Foundation; Iqbal Quadir, founder of Grameen Phone and Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute. A diverse number of other contributors, from South Africa, Istanbul, Brazil, and Tanzania provide insights on creative experiments conducted by philanthropic foundations and social investors seeking to trigger larger system-changes in society and the economy.