October 2026
Across the world, businesses are investing in sustainable supply chains, impact investors are seeking opportunities to deploy capital for positive outcomes, and civil society organizations are working to strengthen communities and protect natural ecosystems.
Yet despite these efforts, systemic challenges persist. Deforestation continues, communities struggle to secure sustainable livelihoods, and businesses face growing pressures to build more resilient supply chains.
The problem isn't necessarily a lack of commitment or resources. It's that too often, these efforts happen in isolation. This was the starting point for The Missing Link: Connecting Communities, Capital and Corporate Demand, an interactive workshop hosted by Mutual Value Labs during Building Bridges week in Geneva.
The session explored how different stakeholders can move beyond fragmented efforts toward coordinated action that delivers enduring value for people, planet and business.
From supply chains to supply webs
Opening the session, Mutual Value Labs Executive Director Alastair Colin-Jones challenged participants to reconsider how businesses understand their supply chains. A cocoa farmer in Indonesia, for example, may also grow coconuts, participate in other economic activities and depend on the health of surrounding forests. Yet businesses typically view that farmer through the narrow lens of their own sourcing requirements.
In reality, supply chains are interconnected supply webs, shaped by relationships between communities, businesses and natural ecosystems. Recognizing these interdependencies changes how we approach systemic challenges. Rather than optimizing individual supply chains, businesses can begin to understand the wider systems they depend on and identify opportunities to create value collaboratively.
Systemic challenges require systemic solutions
One message resonated throughout the discussions: no single organization can address complex social and environmental challenges alone. Corporations, investors and civil society organizations often pursue similar outcomes, from improving farmer incomes to preventing deforestation. But their activities are frequently organized around individual priorities, projects or investment opportunities.
A more systemic approach starts by identifying the outcomes that matter to all stakeholders and aligning their contributions towards achieving them. Crucially, this means putting local communities at the center, allowing them to define their aspirations and priorities rather than imposing solutions from outside.
Business models must evolve, not just sustainability programs
The discussion also highlighted the limitations of addressing systemic challenges through standalone sustainability initiatives. Meaningful transformation requires businesses to reconsider how they operate. For commodity buyers, this could mean evolving procurement models to provide greater price stability and more reliable purchasing commitments, enabling local producers and businesses to invest confidently in their futures.
By connecting these commercial changes with appropriate investment capital and community priorities, businesses can strengthen their own resilience while contributing to positive social and environmental outcomes. This is mutual value creation in practice: financial performance and positive impact reinforcing one another over time.
Turning shared ambition into action
To illustrate its place-based systemic transformation approach, Mutual Value Labs shared ongoing work in partnership with SecondMuse Capital across three Indonesian landscapes: Central Sulawesi, East Kalimantan, and Simeulue.
Participants explored how this work brings stakeholders together to design, test, and scale new approaches to local economic development, connecting community-defined priorities, corporate demand, and different forms of capital to cultivate more resilient, mutually beneficial local economies.
The work in Indonesia sits at the heart of a new East–West Model for Nature and Shared Prosperity, recently launched in Singapore by Mutual Value Labs and SecondMuse Capital in partnership with TPC, the Economics of Mutuality Foundation, and NO.17 Foundation.
