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VISTA is a state-of-the-art digital innovation and investor platform transforming innovation and investment in sustainable development to realise the future we want and the future we need. Vista's mission is to scale up sustainable development innovation with the mobilisation of private capital towards a net zero economy.

The problematique

Our financial system is creating crisis prone financial risks for business and the finance sector.

The SDGs could
unlock $12
trillion in
market
opportunities
globally and
create 380
million new jobs

In 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement set out an ambitious vision for the future. In achieving this vision the economic and financial community have a central role to play. To support a just and humanitarian transition to achieve the SDGs and a net zero carbon economy there needs to be a significant increase in the allocation of funds towards innovative sustainable technology products and services. Transitioning to a zero carbon economy is a political task, but that will require transformative investment in Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) at the speed and scale of the digital revolution. Our high carbon economy was created step by step over two centuries. System-wide it must be re-engineered in just 50 years.
    Over the next decade, in excess of $25 trillion in financial capital will have to be deployed across developing economies alone in order to meet the SDGs.[1] The enormity of the problem is clear: private and institutional investors need to commit significantly more capital. However, with their focus largely driven by financial considerations (i.e. riskadjusted rate of returns) conventional financial systems are ill-suited to meeting the need.
    This is because investors for the most part continue to make decisions based on narrowly-defined financial models and their own risk and return tolerance. In their simplest form, the output of these models are ‘prices’ for various ‘risks’. By definition, the value of the risks are determined by variables included in the models. If it is not a variable in the model, it isn’t considered. In the absence of systemic analysis; by neglecting SD variables our financial system is creating crisis-prone financial risks for business and the finance sector. In the context of the catastrophic crisis before us, the financial system is simply not fit for purpose.
   The situation is made more problematic because Private Equity, Venture Capital and Angel finance markets are unevenly developed across countries. In many emerging markets financial systems are characterized by excess liquidity in banking markets, which is not channelled into investment in technology and innovation due to a combination of the fundamental problem of pricing under uncertainty, risk-aversion, asymmetric information and siloed knowledge. This inhibits the development, diffusion and uptake of scalable sustainable
development solutions.
    The inability of firms to uptake new technologies fully means that private rates of return to R&D and innovation are lower than social rates of return. This leads to under-investment in SD research and innovation and the financing of new SD technologies. This is particularly the case in emerging markets and especially in lesser developed countries.
    However, a growing body of statistical evidence demonstrates that allocating capital in sustainable investments makes sound economic sense. It is estimated that achieving the SDGs could unlock $12 trillion in market opportunities globally and create 380 million new jobs by 2030, 90% of which are expected to be in developing countries.[3]
    There are also significant opportunities presented by the global shift toward a sustainable economy. Morgan Stanley’s research looked at data from nearly 11,000 mutual and exchange-traded funds, and found that investing sustainably had no financial trade-off versus traditional funds but did have lower risk.[4]
    Companies that score high on SD investment criteria often provide more sustainable long-term revenue streams and mitigate risk through responsible practices. Taking SD variables into consideration can help to unlock unrealized value, and is an increasingly compelling and attractive way to invest. Morgan Stanley found that 75% of investors surveyed were interested in sustainable investing. For millennials this figure rose to 86%.[5]
    Investing through an SDG lens, surfaces the most impactful areas for change, and suggests actionable recommendations to improve the deployment of capital towards SDG-related investments.[6]
    Eroding siloed thinking, informational asymmetries and other market failures, Vista provides a smart platform enabling innovators and financial actors to identify risk-mitigated early stage investment opportunities of significant benefit aligned to their SD investment portfolio.[7]

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1. United Nations, Financing for SDGs: Breaking the Bottlenecks of Investment from Policy to Impact, 2018.
2. Business & Sustainable Development Commission, Better Business Better World, 2017.
3. Business & Sustainable Development Commission, Better Business Better World, 2017.
4. Morgan Stanley. “Sustainable Reality: Analyzing Risk and Returns of Sustainable Funds”https://www.morganstanley.com/pub/content/dam/msdotcom/ideas/sustainable-investing-offersfinancial-performance-loweredrisk/Sustainable_Reality_Analyzing_Risk_and_Returns_of_Sustainable_Funds.pdf
5. Sustainable Signals Whitepaper, 2018, Morgan Stanley https://www.morganstanley.com/pub/content/dam/msdotcom/ideas/sustainablesignals/pdf/Sustainable_Signals_Whitepaper.pdf
6. World Economic Forum, The New Physics of Financial Services – How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming the Financial Ecosystem (World Economic Forum, 2018).
7. Semi-supervised ensemble learning-based prediction processes ingest scientific ideas, collect associated publicly-available data, and accurately predicts the probability whether specific ideas will eventually lead to regulatory compliant and impactful solutions.

The Vista SolutioN

Vista harnesses the
digitalization of
finance and exabyte
scale data bases to
accelerate the
development and
financing of SDG
solutions.

Powered by Artificial Intelligence, Vista harnesses the digitalization of finance and exabyte scale data bases to accelerate the development and financing of SDG solutions. A platform for financial intermediation through digital solutions, Vista enables reductions in material and financial risk as well as transaction costs for all counter-parties. This represents an opportunity to facilitate access to long-term investors. It therefore contributes to the
emergence of additional capacity to underwrite new sustainable investment.
    Mobilizing scientific and financial expertise, Vista is investing in the tools and capabilities to allow investors to better understand investment-material risks and opportunities associated with achieving the SDGs; uncovering the link between financial materiality and SDG outcomes.
    Fit for purpose with unrivaled scale and global scope, by 2024 Vista will host the world's largest innovation ecosystem, catalyzing partner capabilities to enable cutting-edge responsible innovation to realize the future we need and the future we want.[8]
    Among the features that makes Vista revolutionary is the integration of Machine Learning algorithms to enable the discovery of new relationships including material and financial risk profiles hidden in our semantically enriched knowledge bases. These are dynamically inter-linked clusters of data that describe the real-world and its emergent properties and enables the early identification of "black swan" events. Matching candidate solutions to needs, the platform automatically creates ever-more relevant recommendations and matchmaking suggestions by using machine learning to identify high-value systemic risk-mitigated solutions and accelerate their diffusion and financing.
    Vista offers a smart platform to facilitate the identification of high-value systemic risk-mitigated breakthrough innovations while providing actionable data-driven investment guidance to enhance fiduciary governance.
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References:
8. Rome Declaration on Responsible Research and Innovation in Europe.

Vista Value PropositioN

Vista disrupts
self-referential
regional
innovation
clusters to
create “digital
archipelagos".

For innovators and investors, the Vista platform automatically provides ever-more relevant matchmaking suggestions by using machine learning to provide systemic risk-mitigated solutions and accelerate the diffusion and uptake of breakthrough sustainable development solutions.
    Systematizing frontier digital innovation to secure our future prosperity we are committed to a future in which Vista:

• ​Offers an AI-driven Innovation Brokerage System helping partners to identify strategically complementary R&D and innovation opportunities with access to exclusive data bases and unique multi-faceted predictive analytics;
  
• Disrupts self-referential regional innovation clusters to create “digital archipelagos” that erode geographical barriers for regions with limited innovation capacities and the absence of knowledge spillovers;
  
• Enable collaborations throughout the innovation cycle, from R&D to financing to accelerate the uptake of SD innovations;
  
• Provides systemic material and financial risk analysis of asset portfolios;
  
• Focuses on investment opportunities with a resilient value chains and low cost development pathways characterized by rapid scaling;
  
• Provides a concierge service to guide partners through a streamlined, customized approach;
  
• Integrates and accelerates research and innovation by connecting a diverse range of resources and experts to provide industry-leading solutions;
  
• Erodes information asymmetries and siloed knowledge to unlock the full potential of partners and businesses to bridge the innovation gap and advance our future prosperity;
  
• Enables organizations to not only build more efficient collaborations, but also to enter into new ways of working and unlock previously unattainable value; and,
  
• Catalyzes the innovation ecosystem where financing partners – government agencies, philanthropies, Private Equity, VCs and Angel investors – can confidently identify very high potential, systemic risk-mitigated opportunities.
  

Partner with VistA

Managing
more than
$5
trillion in
assets ...

Transforming innovation and investment in sustainable development, Vista is working with innovators, influential investors and companies to drive solutions throughout the economy. Managing more than $5 trillion in assets, by 2025 Vista partners will include investors from leading asset management firms, pension funds, and socially-responsible investment funds, venture capital and angel financiers accelerating the development and financing of SDG solutions to realise the future we want and the future we need.
    Becoming a partner with VISTA means joining a growing number of innovators and financing organisations and companies worldwide seeking systemic risk-mitigated SD solutions and investment opportunities.
    Join us in addressing the most urgent 21st century challenges and delivering on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
    Partnership with VISTA is open to companies or organisations which seek to contribute to the accelerated development and financing of systemic risk-mitigated SDG solutions.
    Recognizing that cooperation will be key to achieving the SDGs, we strive to continually expand our ecosystem of partnerships with government organizations, civil society, and academia.
    Join our frontier innovators and influential investors who are advancing sustainable investment practices and decision-making to realise the future we want and the future we need.

    To learn more, please contact us at vista@u4sustainability.org or click the button below to complete an inquiry form.

INQUIRE HERE TO JOIN VISTA

VISTA  brochure