Impact-Driven Narratives

“Facts alone don’t move hearts, or wallets,” says Cristián Hernández of Zentynel. Frame the science as a societal outcome tied to a measurable indicator, without slipping into greenwashing.

The rationale

Participants across the LADP roundtables argued that a purely technical pitch, built on scientific complexity or engineering novelty, loses rooms that a societal-outcome framing would win. Cristián Hernández, General Manager at Zentynel and author of Catalysts of Change, puts it directly: investors, regulators and partners must understand the science and also feel the urgency of what a company is building. Nothing in this report measures the link between narrative framing and round outcomes, so this is a pattern reported by practitioners, not a demonstrated regularity, and it should be read that way.

The frame already has an institutional home. UNDP’s 2025 report Global Deep Tech Ecosystems opens with why deep tech matters for the Sustainable Development Goals and reports that 97% of deep tech ventures contribute to at least one. The region’s endowments make the mapping concrete rather than rhetorical: 65% of LATAM electricity is clean against a 41% global average, Latin America holds roughly 40% of global biodiversity, and biotechnology is 61% of mapped regional deep tech companies, sitting on health, food security and agriculture. As the agenda gains institutional legitimacy, a mission becomes an asset that differentiates a venture and attracts long-term partners.

The objection is that this reads as advice to sell feelings instead of returns. The roundtables were explicit that deep tech investment is not philanthropy, and that investors drawn to the hybrid appeal want impact without compromising on performance. The discipline that keeps the framing honest is what makes it credible: every SDG claim tied to a named target and to an indicator the venture already reports, held to the same auditability as its financial claims. Impact language with no indicator behind it is greenwashing, and a diligence team will price it as such.

The evidence

First moves

1. 0–6 months

   Map each venture to named targets and existing indicators

   Require portfolio and program companies to state which SDG targets they address and which indicator they already measure for each, on a one-page template filed in the same data-room section as the financials.

   Venture builders and accelerators + IDB Lab as an LP
2. 6–18 months

   Run narrative training with the performance case attached

   Deliver a workshop track that pairs narrative construction with the return argument, using the region’s verified endowments and a live company example, and reject any claim that has no indicator behind it.

   LADP coalition secretariat + national innovation agencies + university TTOs
3. 18–36 months

   Publish an annual regional impact register

   Release a register of LATAM deep tech ventures with their stated targets, indicators and reported values, open to public challenge, so this year’s claims can be checked against last year’s entry.

   LADP coalition secretariat + IDB Lab + independent ecosystem mappers

How we would know it worked

• Share of mapped regional deep tech ventures publishing at least one SDG-linked indicator with a numeric value, from the annual register, above 50%.
• Register entries whose reported indicator value is restated or withdrawn year on year, published openly, as the honesty check on the register itself.
• Impact-linked or mission-aligned capital committed to LATAM deep tech ventures, counted annually from the funders registry, rising from a 2026 baseline.
• Median number of days between a venture’s SDG claim and its supporting indicator being available to a diligence team, sampled across 30 data rooms a year, falling toward zero.

What could go wrong

Who acts

Rests on

The data behind it