By Kate Fox

London’s public transport is free, clean and comfortable, making cars unnecessary. Kenya has been rewilded and now grows its crops in sky-scraping urban farms in Nairobi. Data centres have moved to the Moon now that Earth has turned ‘carbon negative’.

Welcome to the world of 2050. These scenarios projecting how things might change for the better are illustrations of the time-travelling mission of the Deep Transitions Project, an international programme that learns from the past to imagine how transformative investment can help bring about a more sustainable and positive future.

Working backwards from such idealised projections of the future, the project’s researchers seek to work out what needs to happen in the present to allow pioneering companies with potentially world-changing products – the flying taxis of Joby Aviation or the precision agricultural equipment made by John Deere – become default choices.

A ‘deep transition’ is a profound shift in the social order bought about by technology, for example the Industrial Revolution.

Great things came from that in terms of prosperity and technological advancement, but there have been some unintended negative consequences: climate change, biodiversity loss, rising inequality. So now another deep transition needs to happen to undo the harm created by the first.

Finding ways to do that is the purpose of Deep Transitions, a collaboration between Utrecht University and the University of Sussex led by the science and technology historian Johan Schot. The project focuses on instilling a set of values and norms that prioritise social and environmental well-being. It does that by looking at how we can change the way we produce and consume in areas as such as food, energy and mobility.

A key component of this research is finding the great growth companies of the future as these act as a really important mechanism for change and could generate attractive investment returns over the coming years and decades. Deep Transitions studies the past for examples of technological ‘roads not taken’: potential advances that failed to catch on, but whose ‘might-have-been’ potential can inspire us now.

One example is the electric cars of the 1880s that – disastrously for the planet – lost out to their internal combustion cousins. By studying the dynamics and constraints in the relationship between these thwarted technologies and the dominant models, Deep Transitions learns how to protect and nurture ‘niche’ technologies that lack powerful backers, but have the most potential to promote positive change, in a bid to guide investors towards them. A good example of a “niche within a system” is the flying taxis being pioneered by Joby Aviation.

What is exciting about Deep Transitions is that it helps identify the ‘frontrunner’ companies that can drive that change. Sometimes the companies championing these niche technologies, such as farming machinery company John Deere, are companies that have long roots in the old system, but which are nurturing the technologies that will boost the next transition.

The agricultural system is currently very industrialised. It consumes a huge amount of water and is responsible for up to 20% of global emissions. Change needs to happen.

John Deere makes precision agriculture equipment, which uses a combination of sensors, cameras and data to help identity what’s a plant and what’s a weed, so that it can apply herbicides and fertilisers appropriately. This means that farmers can increase yields by using fewer chemical fertilisers, while also helping them work in a more nimble and agile manner.

The next generation of the project promises to evolve from conceptual thinking to practical application, applying an experimental approach that includes futuristic scenario planning and learning from the thought experiments. The aim is to help educate the next generation of investors, because this is going to be a multi-decade approach.

It is going to take lots of different groups within society to address the challenges that we face. In some ways, this transformative investment philosophy is likely a niche within the financial system. It is fragile, but it can contribute towards the transformation of the financial system so that more capital is deployed towards enabling that second, important deep transition.

Whether or not Deep Transitions’ projections of lunar living and a congestion-free capital come to pass in the future, what is clear is that it can open up possibilities in the present.

Kate Fox is portfolio manager of the Baillie Gifford Keystone Positive Change Investment Trust and the Baillie Gifford Positive Change Fund