Economic Impact and Sustainable Finance

Finance is an essential element for improving the sustainability of Italian economic growth, understood as the ability to meet our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their future needs. But how can we contribute to this important result? The Spoke combines the best expertise of MUSA partner universities and corporate partners in order to have an impact, especially in the Milan and Lombardy area. Only a participatory approach that involves all relevant stakeholders is capable of producing research that can create innovative products and services that can bring us closer to the goal of sustainability. The essential ingredients of the Spoke are the use of the partners’ best research skills for technology transfer to the community as a whole, but especially to civil society and businesses. The Spoke does not aim to conduct basic research but to find innovative ways to use cutting-edge models and ideas to change and improve things. Among the themes addressed by the various universities, we find socialtech, with a reflection on how impact investing tools can help the operations of companies with social objectives such as new benefit corporations, financial education for sustainability, to ask how to increase awareness of the financial choices of retail investors also considering their social and environmental impact, measuring the sustainability of business choices, especially Italian SMEs caught between investor demands and future demands of impact accounting, the relevance of new technologies, which in the field of financial intermediaries and non-financial players of various sizes and dimensions are witnessing ideas and start-ups capable of changing the operations of all companies and the possibility of having innovative products and services. To achieve these ambitious objectives, cooperation is necessary, to go far and not just fast, with all stakeholders. The presence of university researchers, private companies, research foundations, and media is essential in order to truly innovate and change the behavior of society as a whole in the long run. In particular, the opportunity to work with the Corriere della Sera will allow the involved community to amplify their ideas and trigger a debate in line with the major objectives set by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.