Driving Meaningful Growth: Rethinking Where Business Value Comes From
October 2026
How can businesses identify new opportunities for growth by addressing the challenges facing people and the planet? In a recent information session, Mutual Value Labs introduced its first digital learning course, Driving Meaningful Growth, exploring how leaders can connect purpose, innovation, and commercial performance through mutual value creation.
Led by Ruth Stoddart, Program Director, and Lia-Marie Fillies, Program Coordinator, the session introduced the thinking behind the course, the practical tools participants will explore, and how the five-week learning experience is designed to help leaders apply these ideas within their own organizations.
You can watch the full recording of the session below, or keep scrolling for a summary of the key ideas and insights.
At the heart of Driving Meaningful Growth is a different way of thinking about the relationship between business performance and societal impact.
As Ruth explained in the information session, mutual value is created when businesses develop profitable, enduring solutions to meaningful social and environmental challenges, allowing financial performance and positive impact to reinforce each other over time.
Ruth also challenged participants to reconsider a familiar assumption about the role of business: that maximizing profit should be its primary objective.
Traditionally, businesses have viewed social and environmental challenges largely through the lens of risks, costs, or externalities that need to be managed. More recently, stakeholder approaches have broadened this perspective, encouraging businesses to consider their impacts on employees, suppliers, customers, communities, and the environment.
Mutual value creation offers a further perspective: what if addressing meaningful challenges for people and the planet could become a source of innovation, competitive advantage, and long-term growth?
This requires moving from asking how businesses can maximize profit while managing externalities to asking how they can create enduring value for the business and the wider world simultaneously.
From Purpose to Practical Innovation
Driving Meaningful Growth takes participants through a structured process, beginning with identifying a meaningful societal or environmental challenge that their organization is particularly well placed to address.
Rather than defining purpose solely through what a business produces or the values it holds, participants are encouraged to consider the specific needs their organization can help meet.
From there, the focus shifts to understanding the wider system in which the business operates, including the experiences, needs, and perspectives of the stakeholders affected by that challenge.
As Lia-Marie explained during the session, understanding these needs requires leaders to look beyond their existing assumptions.
The aim is to identify solutions that address meaningful challenges while creating and capturing sufficient value for the business to be commercially viable and scalable.
Importantly, the course also explores how organizations can develop a more holistic understanding of performance, connecting financial results with human, social, and environmental outcomes.
Learning Through Real-World Application
A central feature of the course is its emphasis on applying mutual value creation to real business contexts.
Throughout the five weeks, participants will explore case studies drawn from academic research and Mutual Value Labs' experience working with organizations to put these principles into practice.
These examples illustrate both the opportunities and the challenges businesses encounter when seeking to integrate purpose and performance into their strategies and operations.
The course also draws on Putting Purpose into Practice, an open-source Oxford University Press book that brings together research, practical approaches, and case studies illustrating how businesses can create mutual value.
By connecting the methodology with real examples, participants are encouraged to consider how the ideas might translate into their own organizations, industries, and professional roles.
A Flexible Learning Experience Built Around Collaboration
Designed with busy professionals in mind, Driving Meaningful Growth combines self-paced digital learning with live facilitated sessions and opportunities for peer exchange.
Over five weeks, participants work through five lessons, each requiring approximately two to three hours of independent study.
The experience also includes three live interactive sessions and three assignments reviewed by tutors with expertise in mutual value creation.
These sessions provide opportunities to discuss ideas, test assumptions, learn from others, and explore how the concepts apply to different organizational contexts.
Flexibility is an important part of the design. Participants can work through the digital materials at their own pace, while recordings of live sessions will be available for those unable to attend.
Join the Next Cohort of Driving Meaningful Growth
The first cohort of Driving Meaningful Growth runs from November 2 to December 4, 2026, bringing together leaders from different sectors and geographies to explore how societal and environmental challenges can become opportunities for meaningful business growth.
Interested in exploring a different approach to business growth?
Learn more about Driving Meaningful Growth and apply for the November cohort.
