News & Insights

Over two packed days, and through our partnership with Harvard Business School, JBWere NZ presented six masterclasses designed for governors and CEOs from across the for-purpose sector in Aotearoa New Zealand covering topics of relevance such as place-based funding, Māori-led stewardship, impact investing, performance and innovation in the For-Purpose sector, and the role of philanthropy in contributing towards systems level change. 

Our guest was Professor Shawn Cole, the John G. McLean Professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School where he teaches and conducts research on financial services, social enterprise, and impact investing.

In the final flagship session, Prof Cole was joined by leading voices from Aotearoa to explore how wealth can be put to work for generations.  The discussions centred on transformative approaches that move beyond traditional grant-making and philanthropy to tackle complex, adaptive challenges such as housing, global poverty, climate change, rapid job displacement through automation and health.  

Prof Cole shared international insights as a means to offer a few roadmaps for those seeking to amplify impact and create lasting change and local panellists described how this can work in a New Zealand context.  

• Systems-led design thinking:  Complex and seemingly intractable problems rarely have single causes. Systems-led design thinking offers a holistic approach that examines connections, relationships and feedback loops to understand the bigger picture.  It can create shared understanding among stakeholders by providing a framework for discussing complex issues and visualising connections, often through tools like causal loop diagrams. 

• Impact investing:  Impact investing deploys capital to generate measurable social or environmental benefits alongside financial returns. For investors, this means aligning portfolios with values while driving system change.

Benefits include:

• Dual returns: Achieve social impact and financial performance simultaneously.

• Catalytic capital: Your dollar can leverage others, amplifying change.

• Beyond charity: Social enterprises often scale faster than traditional charities.

• Better incentives: Impact-driven businesses attract top talent and foster innovation.

We acknowledge and thank our colleagues at JBWere Australia for their leadership in supporting the design of the programme and who have, for 18 years, partnered with Harvard Business School.  This leading global thinking is now made available to our New Zealand clients, collaborators and leaders from across all sectors.

Please click on the image below to view highlights of the flagship event.