Glenn Yago – 25(5)

Prof. Glenn Yago, Innovative Development Finance Practice, Global MDP Classroom,  Tuesday Global Classroom Lecture 5, September 30, 2025

This Global MDP Classroom session will focus on how to effectively set-up and manage impact investment funds and apply innovative finance and business models in order to achieve true impact. Impact Investments have the intention of generating measurable social or environmental impact alongside a financial return – but how can this be achieved? How can impact investments truly provide financial access for social and environmental businesses and projects? Are appropriate products and structures being used? Are the intended impacts being realized? What are the latest innovative financing models that can be applied? What are the sectors where impact investing can be most helpful in reaching SDGs and the climate, health, and environmental challenges facing global development?

How sustainable and impact finance and entrepreneurship are reshaping developing markets

 Technology now enables us to measure and cost the impact on people and planet that companies create through their products, employment and operations. With $52+ trillion of ESG-SDG and impact investment seeking more than profit, investors, as well as consumers, employees, entrepreneurs and governments, have a right to know this impact. Mandating transparency would bring impact, alongside profit, to the center of our economic system by motivating companies, entrepreneurs and investors to bring solutions to our great social and environmental challenges – in effect reshaping markets to create a fairer and more sustainable world.

Readings:

Intro Readings:

 Sir Ronald Cohen, Impact:  Reshaping Capitalism to Drive Real Change, London: Edbury Press, 2020.  Chapters 2 and 3:   34-85.

**Yago, Glenn and Steven Zecher, “Innovating Sustainable Finance for Development Impact,” in Paul Walsh and Ciara Whelan (eds.), Transforming our World:  the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, London: Elgar, 2023.

**Systems Financing for Climate Smart Smallholder Agriculture, Financial Innovation Lab Report, August 2024.

**Applying Innovative Finance and Business Models for Real Impact: The How-to of Investment Fund Design and Management, Aspen Learning Lab Impact Management, November 2019.

Applications:

**A. Koenig, et.al., Innovative Development Finance Toolbox, KfW Development Bank, October 2020.