Morgan Simon, Harvard Business Review
June 8, 2018
"Impact investors over the past decade largely focused on proving that impact investments could achieve a “market rate” or above return profile. Making something wildly profitable will of course attract the attention of financial markets, and thus increase the chances it will scale effectively.
Often, however, the elements that make something profitable work counter to those that maximize positive social impact. So it’s important to recognize that if we expect to expand impact investment based primarily on its profitability, we should expect to get just what we set out to create: a tool that has maximized profit over impact."