The cooperation with the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) pursued the goal of creating a better understanding of the ex-ante evaluation of social innovations. Numerous joint activities were implemented as part of the project. In addition to ongoing operational support for the FFG Impact Innovation Call and several contributions to conferences and public events, the project carried out intensive research in the field of impact investing.

Based on a literature research with a focus on the investment decision-making processes of impact investors, the research team concentrated on the following key question: Which cognitive processes determine how early-stage impact investors evaluate the impact of social enterprises? In order to shed light on the decision-making process of impact investors on a cognitive level, the Verbal Protocol Analysis or “Think Aloud Method” (Van Someren 1994) was selected. In this method respondents are asked to “think aloud” during their individual decision-making process. This enables both a deeper understanding of the respondents' assessment processes and an analysis of thought processes that are not reflected on by the respondents themselves.

As a result, the research team was able to identify 23 cognitive patterns of the ex-ante impact assessments in seven areas: (1) assessment of the (social) problems’ plausibility (2) assessment of the proposed interventions’ potential benefit ( 3) construction of mental prototypes for impact models, (4) interpretation of signals from third parties, (5) evaluation of the organizational embedding of impact goals, (6) assessment of the positioning, quantity and quality of the information on social impact in the document and (7) call for action . The identified patterns only correspond to a small extent with the methods of classic impact measurement and indicate the willingness of early-stage impact investors to make far-reaching assessments using heuristics based on incomplete information.

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