Frequently asked questions.

WhiteBox is an environmental, social and governance impact and risk intelligence platform and the think tank that explores and develops it.

WhiteBox can also refer to the organisation, team and structural framework that surrounds a project, company or investment, providing it with the necessary scaffolding of digital processes to monitor, assess and report environmental, social and governance impact and risk.

WhiteBox leverages open data and deep learning to map stakeholder ecosystems and environmental, social and governance issues as they unfold and evolve. Understanding the stakeholder ecosystem is the first step in assessing impact and risk between stakeholders.

This complex web of inter-linkages and multiple dimensions between stakeholders forms the narrative that is impact and risk.

We define impact as the effect or influence of one person, thing or action on another.

To have a positive impact between stakeholders means stakeholders acting in a manner that has a positive effect on each other, creating new shared value and net gains. To have a negative impact between stakeholders means stakeholders acting in a manner that has deleterious effects on each other, resulting in net losses or opportunity costs.

We define risk as the probability of something occurring multiplied by the cost or benefit of it happening.

Risk between stakeholders arises from the nature of the relationship, in all its dimensions, between stakeholders in an ecosystem.

We define impact and risk intelligence as the understanding of environments and communities in order to maximise positive impact and mitigate risk between stakeholders, thereby creating and protecting net stakeholder value.

The opposite of a black box: a system you can see inside. A whitebox is a volume of space and time around a project, a company, a community or a piece of land. Inside it sit vectors of high-dimensional data describing impact and risk along four dimensions (social, environmental, governance and financial), with the data each requires. Its first layer is the stakeholders directly affected, engaged and heard; the other data came later and sits on top. The box is kept open so the numbers can be checked by the people they describe. In Druid, the product that came out of this work, every field has one.