What is impact?

Impact is a nebulous term with no agreed upon definition. This has led to many cases of impact or green ‘washing’ i.e. over claiming impact (unintentionally or intentionally).

The closest we’ve reached to a consensus is the Impact Management Project’s definition of impact: ‘a change in outcomes for people and/or planet’. 

There are two points worth pulling out from this definition:

  1. While we hope to create positive impact, it's possible to create negative impact (e.g. increase emissions, erosions of user privacy, etc.). This means we have to be mindful of our actions and actively manage our impact to reduce negative impacts and increase positive impact

  2. Impact is about outcomes on people and/or the planet. Many startups and investors claim impact by proxy e.g. 'we work in healthcare/emerging markets'. We can only claim impact when we can rigorously demonstrate the outcomes that are being generated for people and/or planet e.g. 'we've improved X number of people's lives in Y way'

There are several outcomes that can be targeted by businesses looking to have an impact. Some comprehensive lists include:

  1. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

  2. Big Society Capital & Good Finance's Outcome Matrix

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