The term Impact Investing was coined in 2007 to refer to “investments made with the intention of generating both financial return and social and/or environmental impact”. Less than a decade later, impact investing now boasts $77B in assets, with $15B invested in 2015 alone — a 30% increase from the previous year — and is expected to grow by a factor of ten over the next ten years. For comparison, $141B was invested in venture capital worldwide in 2015, but experienced a decline of 10% in 2016 in total deal funding.

With such growing interest in this approach to investing from a great variety of stakeholders, impact investing inevitably means different things to different people ranging from investments in luxury car manufacturer Tesla, to ...