Summarized highlights from What Could and Should Impact Measurement Look Like in Systemic Investing? | Jess Daggers
This article series explores how systems and complexity thinking can transform impact measurement in systemic investing. The author argues that conventional impact measurement frameworks are based on linear, reductionist worldviews that don’t align with systems-based approaches to change.
Key insights include:
Systems and complexity thinking provide fundamentally different mental models for understanding change, requiring investors to ask different questions about measurement
The focus should shift from “what is the impact of my investment?” to “what does my investment allow me to learn about the system I want to change?”
Impact measurement should be reconceptualized as generating “flows of information about what is happening” in a system
Existing resources from complexity science, systems-informed monitoring and evaluation, and Indigenous knowledge can inform better approaches
Relationships between investors and investees shape the knowledge infrastructure being created
The project aims to connect theoretical systems thinking with practical investment approaches
The author notes that much valuable work in this space remains disconnected from investment practice, and the series aims to bridge this gap.
