Place-Based Flourishing
March 2026 | Economics of Mutuality Experts Series
A Conversation with Jay Jakub
in this interview, Jay Jakub, Executive Director at the Economics of Mutuality Foundation, explains how the Foundation is seeking to catalyze place-based systemic transformation by developing “Mutual Living Labs” that create long-term value for communities, the planet, and business.
What is the unique role of the Economics of Mutuality Foundation in turning Economics of Mutuality principles into on-the-ground impact?
The Foundation plays multiple roles: raising philanthropic capital, convening the right partners and stakeholders, and helping build the local credibility needed to align actors around place-based systemic transformation.
One of our core strategic partners is Mutual Value Labs, the Foundation’s wholly-owned subsidiary. Together, we work closely with SecondMuse – a leading innovation firm with a global remit dedicated to creating economic value through market-driven solutions that generate lasting impact – to build resilient local economies and accelerate innovations that benefit people and the planet. The focus of this core partnership is to convene stakeholders in places where systemic transformation projects can happen that bring flourishing to communities and to nature.
The Foundation engages and convenes stakeholders with credible local partners, raises philanthropic capital for place-based transformation initiatives, brings in the right academic collaborators to capture learnings, develop cases and new teaching curricula, and builds relationships necessary for transformation to take root and to scale up. Mutual Value Labs leads the work on the ground to deliver initiatives that drive transformation.
In addition to bringing local academic capabilities to support place-based work, we have a global education reach that is being leveraged to capture a broader set of place-based and mutual value creation learnings. One of our new partnering initiatives is the Global Alliance for Conscious Business Education, which we co-founded last October with UPF Barcelona School of Management, Munich Business School, Tecnológico de Monterrey’s Conscious Business Enterprise Center, Fordham University’s Humanistic Leadership Academy. Additional institutions of learning from around the world are exploring different ways to join with this movement to transform management curricula, and our contribution is to help bring real case examples of mutual value creation – and soon of place-based systemic transformation – along with supporting data into ‘conscious’ teaching curricula development.
These partners, alongside other leading academics in our global network, will help us collect data, evaluate outcomes, and turn the lessons from place-based projects into playbooks and case studies that can be used to scale the model globally.
So, on the front end, we mobilize and align philanthropic capital and stakeholders. On the back end, we harvest the learnings and help turn them into knowledge that can be replicated elsewhere. In the middle, we look at ways to engage local support for data collection and analysis.
Place-based transformation is a central focus of the Foundation’s strategy. Why start with place?
One of the missing pieces in many place-based systemic transformation efforts involves the role of business.
Business has often been disconnected from communities as a result of profit maximization strategies for shareholders and globalization of the supply chain. Yet businesses are essential creators of jobs and wealth within communities.
Absent properly engaged, motivated, equipped, and positioned private enterprises within these systems, it becomes very challenging to create and sustain transformation that is both meaningful and replicable.
That’s where the Economics of Mutuality approach can help. Over the past two decades, we’ve developed methodologies, metrics, management practices, and tools that help businesses create mutual value – value not only for shareholders, but also for stakeholders across society and the environment. Through Mutual Value Labs, that practical expertise can now be applied to ecosystems of places to help position private industry to bring maximum positive impact within a place-based transformation effort.
When the right stakeholders – businesses, investors, local institutions, governments, academic partners – are brought together around a place you can begin to create what we call “Mutual Living Labs,” which are examples of what a stakeholder-focused mutual economy can look like.
The goal is to demonstrate that these models can contribute to human and environmental flourishing within local geographies, and that Mutual Living Labs can become replicable templates for scaling elsewhere.
What are the Foundation’s key priorities today?
A big priority is building the partnerships and funding mechanisms that enable these place-based projects to move forward. One very important part of this is identifying, engaging, and collaborating with like-purposed family offices.
As we’ve explored place-based transformation, we’ve found that traditional development approaches often struggle to deliver measurable outcomes, and as a result, development funds are drying up. At the same time, however, there is a significant amount of investment capital available within family offices that is being under-deployed for lack of viable projects that can realistically deliver desired outcomes.
Our approach is to create those investible opportunities for family offices by bringing together partners such as Mutual Value Labs and SecondMuse to develop project-ready ecosystems and blended finance platforms where clusters of businesses and initiatives can work together to produce measurable outcomes.
Family offices are particularly interesting because they are more likely to have a sense of purpose and can be clustered with other family offices with similar interests to invest in place-based projects long term. That makes it easier to engage them in conversations about purpose and the outcomes they want to achieve – financially, yes, but also socially, and environmentally – than it is to engage shareholders in publicly traded enterprises who are connected only in their desire for maximized ROI.
Another priority for the Foundation is demonstrating that approach through concrete initiatives. For example, we’ve been exploring initiatives with partners in places like Portland, Oregon, where, with SecondMuse, we are aiming to undertake work around circularity of organics, sustainable forestry, residential and commercial real estate energy efficiency, and more.
In Louisville, Kentucky, loneliness as a mental and physical health challenge has become an entry point for engaging stakeholders in the context of local interest in the concept of a ‘Universal Basic Neighborhood.’ We are seeking to build on this work to bring greater flourishing to underserved communities by addressing barriers to employment opportunities, such as lack of reliable public and private transport, affordable daycare, and more.
In Memphis, Tennessee, we’re exploring how the Economics of Mutuality approach can meaningfully contribute to a major urban renewal effort already underway that is focused on affordable housing and job creation.
In Bath and Grimsby, England, we’re exploring with local social capital providers and other stakeholders different ways to bring greater community health and flourishing.
And in Sulawesi, Indonesia, projects centered on commodities are being scoped and blended finance platforms are being collaboratively designed.
Through the Business vs. Loneliness initiative, we combined Mutual Value Labs’ work for corporations with academic expertise engaged by the Foundation to explore how business models can help address loneliness while creating value for companies.
Those types of projects help demonstrate in tangible ways how business can play a constructive role in addressing systemic issues, with much more to come.
What distinguishes the Foundation’s approach from other organizations working in this space?
One distinguishing factor is the depth of practical research and proof-of-concept prototyping behind the Economics of Mutuality approach.
The Economics of Mutuality originally emerged from the internal think tank of a large multinational corporation, Mars, Incorporated, which invested $60+ million over more than a decade and a half to fund the initial development and proof-of-concept testing in different business units and markets of the approach, allowing our team to spin out into an independent construct that since 2020 has been led by the Foundation and Mutual Value Labs. That body of applied research produced measurement systems for different forms of capital – human, social, natural, and shared financial capital – that allow us to drive and evaluate outcomes beyond traditional financial metrics, demonstrating how non-financial capital creation in any business activity can drive growth and earnings through measurable impact, while depletion of those non-financial resources often act as an invisible drag on the top and bottom lines of private enterprise.
Another distinguishing feature of our Foundation is our partnership model, built on complementarity.
For example, Mutual Value Labs brings the mutual value framework and the business transformation expertise. SecondMuse brings deep experience in delivering field projects and building blended finance platforms. The Foundation, in turn, brings the ability to engage and convene partners and stakeholders, leveraging academic institutions for replication and scaling learnings, and connecting with networks such as family offices to bring finance to transformation projects.
And the Foundation is exploring other partnerships with experts in aspects of place-based transformation, where we and Mutual Value Labs are not sufficiently experienced, to ensure we are integrating learnings and not trying to reinvent the wheel with our limited resources. Walking together with others in a humble journey of co-creation is what we are after because collectively, these capabilities allow us to achieve outcomes beyond the reach of any one of us alone.
How do you envision the Foundation in the future?
Success in the future would mean that we have established a network of replicable “Mutual Living Labs” around the world, in places that are geographically, culturally, and economically diverse. These would be real examples demonstrating that the model works: places where ecosystem orchestration has produced measurable human and natural flourishing. Illustrating this across multiple geographic locations would show that the model is scalable and adaptable.
Another measure of success will be educational. I would like to see the mutual value creation approach become a permanent part of management education, not a short-term fad that disappears after a time, so that universities are not teaching profit maximization alone. New teaching curricula needs to include mutual value creation models that place purpose and stakeholder value at the center of private industry, prioritizing place over self.
Finally, I would hope that we will over time have built enduring partnerships with clusters of family offices that see the value in this work and continue supporting it over the long term. A stable funding model will be essential. The goal is to create a model that continues delivering flourishing in communities long after those involved today have stepped away.
