Working towards a workshop – raw idea generation

I want to go deeper and I want to make myself uncomfortable. To do that, I want to run a half-day workshop to be held in the 4th qtr of 2018. I don’t have a topic, a target audience, a format or even a venue. I have just moved back to my hometown of Brisbane, Queensland from New York so a workshop will also help me as I develop the next stage of my career.

Descriptions of successful workshops cite foundational questions like ‘what job are you trying to get done? ‘ and ‘what outcomes are you looking to achieve?’ but that presupposes that I know the industry or the segment that I will orient the workshop towards.

So, I will began by outlining the topics, industries and processes that I have worked on over the last several years including:

• a deep analysis of the impact of automation on workers in the US retail sector;
• a broad assessment of the environmental and social risks to the protein sector;  and
• how investing that includes the consideration of environmental and social impacts into the decision process is more informed investing.

These are broad topics with a vast amount of information, conjecture and future possibilities but they also represent a decent amount of proprietary work which could be used as case studies in a workshop. However, my work mainly focused on the implications for US investors and companies which is less useful in Australia.

The next step was to to reach out to old colleagues and connections for coffee chats with the aim of asking a simple question – ‘what questions are you hearing around you?’. With this question, I trying to jump as close as I can to the actual need of a set of people.

Early results are mixed.

In the electricity industry, most people are waiting for more guidance from government on the future of the Australian electricity system. Having spent the last five years abroad, I could offer some discussion on recent events across the US electricity system but that feels like a informational session rather than a workshop and I am not well-versed in all of the intricacies of the different US regional electricity markets so significant effort would be needed to say something that is useful to an Australian audience and  is accurate.

A comment from another colleague on the state of the water and electricity markets was that I would find that little has changed in the six years that I have been outside of the sectors and Australia. Largely the same discussions. Again this is not fertile ground for a workshop. Intractable or wicked problems are not going to be solved in half a day.

An interesting area for a potential workshop is the rise of impact investing. This term is ambiguous but I take it to be comprised of two layers. One, the investment process (i.e. the decision to put capital at risk for a set of outcomes including financial) includes detailed analysis of the social and environmental impacts (good and bad) of an investment. Two, the final structure of the investment and the ongoing monitoring of that investments includes a target amount of positive social and/or environmental impact which can, in some cases, sees a reduction in the required financial return of the investment. This should not be the case as a default but a result of clear discussion on any trade-offs.

Australia has a number of organizations, investors and advisers who have expertise in impact investing. For my experience, I was part of a due diligence team that examined impact investment funds on  behalf of our clients in addition to undertaking detailed research on key impact investment themes. I spoke to one person who advises clients on ‘ethical investing’ in Australia. She suggested that there was a real appetite for impact investments within her clients although she couldn’t point to any major investments of late. So there is market demand but limited supply. Interesting.

Finally, I have spoken to a number of former colleagues from the Queensland Government. Again, most suggest that little has changed except that government is currently seeking to substantially decrease its debt. It is likely that debt reduction, assuming flat tax revenue, will involve reductions in services. Decreasing availability of government services could result in greater involvement of private enterprise. Potentially impact investing could form one of the pools of capital for these private enterprises to access.

So there are potential elements like the rise of impact investing, a range of topical research case studies on key industries and sectors, and reduced government services which might serve as a starting point for a workshop.