Future Economy Lab | Secondmuse Capital

FUTURE ECONOMY LAB ™

Our Future Economy Lab is a global research and design lab that collaboratively creates financial and investment mechanisms, as well as strategies to support economies and innovations that are both sustainable and inclusive.

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Mobilizing Investment for Affordable Home Ownership

Over 9 million U.S. homeowners spend more than 50% of their income on housing. RootedHomes and SecondMuse Capital’s Future Economy Lab are addressing this crisis by designing a blended financing mechanism to lower homeownership costs for low-income families. Using modular housing and the Community Land Trust model, this initiative ensures affordability and equitable access to sustainable homeownership.

Collaborators: RootedHomes

Learning to Earning

Globally, one in five young people are not in employment, education, or training, while 87% of employers face skills gaps. To tackle this, we explored innovative finance to guide underserved youth from training into meaningful jobs. Collaborating with capital providers, educators, and community organizations, we co-designed strategies to increase capital flow and improve employment outcomes.

Collaborators: Generation Unlimited, World YMCA

We are committed to innovative product design that uses the following approach:

The Future Economy Lab ™ (FEL) Process

1

Envision

The FEL team and our partners kickstart our process together by defining the current state of capital in the target sector and developing a common vision of our desired future state of capital.

2

Define

We use various research tools—such as desk research, interviews, and landscape mapping—to understand the ecosystem's needs and challenges. We synthesize the data during sense-making sessions with partners and begin creating initial models of potential solutions.

3

Design

Next, we design new financial mechanisms and identify the need for complementary ecosystem development programming to address the gaps and catalyze new solutions to the challenges we’ve surfaced.

4

Launch

Lastly, we launch these new solutions. We refine the financial and impact models in order to raise new capital mechanisms and begin new programs with the support and collaboration of the communities themselves.