Aligning Public Innovation and Impact Investing to Address Major Socio-Ecological Challenges

Responses to today’s major challenges – climate change, sustainability, and technological and social transformations – require new forms of public policy and financial instruments. Two main dynamics emerge: on the one hand, innovation policies oriented toward missions of systemic transformation; on the other, incremental change strategies grounded in local and adaptive initiatives. In both cases, the key lies in aligning instruments, governance, and transformative capacity, which presupposes broad visions, institutional changes, and flexible regulatory frameworks. Impact investing illustrates this ambition to reconcile economic performance with socio-environmental transformation. Built on intentionality, additionality, and measurability, it is marked by structural tensions: the pursuit of profitability versus extra-financial goals, the standardization of tools versus contextualization, and transformative ambition versus risks of drift (greenwashing, mission drift). Its evaluation instruments are performative: they shape priorities and condition capital allocation, while also raising ethical and political concerns linked to the financialization of commons and living systems. Achieving a just and sustainable transition therefore requires rethinking policy and financial instruments, building inclusive governance that integrates vulnerable stakeholders, and developing evaluation frameworks sensitive to local contexts. Only under these conditions can innovation policies and impact finance fully contribute to a democratic and equitable socio-ecological transformation.