For the past year, our team has been following a hunch. We’ve been wrestling with the idea that companies are underestimating the significant long-term business risk of widening economic inequality. The signals have been showing up in different ways: shrinking talent pools, diminished consumer spending, growing costs of living, increased reports of theft, and degradation of civic infrastructure that business depends on. It seems to us that these trends signal a material business threat that deserves the same strategic attention that sustainability and climate resilience has earned over the past two decades.

That realization pushed us to think bigger, which led us, eventually, to place. It’s not a new insight to observe that a company’s long-term performance is tied to the health of the communities it depends on for talent, customers, and operational stability. But we think this idea, the importance of regional resilience, is arriving at a new moment of urgency.

In April, we convened a roundtable of senior corporate leaders to explore this topic. The conversation confirmed what we suspected: attention to economic uncertainty is not a fringe business concern but a pressing one. Leaders came with different frames—talent, risk, philanthropy, supply chain—but arrived at similar questions.

What does it mean to be genuinely invested in a place, not just present in it? How do you connect that investment to business outcomes in ways that hold up internally? And how do you build infrastructure to match ambition?

There were no easy answers, but there was a clear call for progress: away from siloed “purpose” work toward something more integrated, more durable, and more honest about the business rationale. Several leaders described actively restructuring their companies to bring social impact, philanthropy, and commercial strategy under a common framework. Others were wrestling with how to measure what matters for the business and for the community. All were navigating the challenge of how to sustain and scale this work across their companies.

Our plan is to support deeper engagement on regional economic resilience in two ways. The first is to continue the work we began this week, more deeply exploring enterprise-wide investment in place and the business case for doing it well. The second is a focused look at data center development—arguably the most charged intersection of business and community interest right now. In two weeks, we’ll convene a roundtable on that topic specifically. We want to understand the full picture: the economic promise, the community pushback, and whether there is a path forward that genuinely serves both business and society.

The work of building resilient regional economies is too important to remain fragmented. We’re hopeful these conversations will support the collaboration required to chart a new path forward.

If your company has an active interest in regional resilience—or a particular stake in the data center conversation—reach out to us to learn more.