For the past two years, Partnering for Purpose CIC has been working alongside Jess Friday in various capacities. It’s become increasingly clear that we’re pursuing the same underlying question, just from different directions: how do we build an economy that genuinely tackles today’s rising inequality, rather than simply managing around its edges?
Jess frames her answer as the WEconomy — a wellbeing economy built to help people and the planet thrive, not just to generate ever more profit. Through her platform Connectioning.io, she has spent the past four years researching, connecting and documenting a growing landscape of over 300 movements already putting this into practice — community wealth building schemes, worker-owned platforms, circular economy projects and place-based social enterprises operating across the UK, the US and further afield.
Where most books fall short
There’s no shortage of writing that critiques the current economic model, and a reasonable amount that sketches out what a better one might look like. What’s much rarer is a serious, practical account of how we coordinate and implement the best of those solutions — collectively, and at pace.
That’s the gap Jess’s two forthcoming books are designed to close:
- The Power Memo (releasing this August) sets out the strategy that allowed wealth and power to become so concentrated in the hands of a few — and, crucially, how that strategy can be reversed. Written primarily for movement leaders, but accessible to anyone who wants to understand the mechanics of change.
- Of Course: A New Common Sense (following a few weeks later) takes its cue from Thomas Paine’s original pamphlet, which helped move an entire population from argument to collective action within six months. Jess’s version updates that approach for the digital age and the attention economy, aiming to get us onto the same page far more quickly than we otherwise might.
Why we think this matters
Jess’s research on Scotland’s Community Wealth Building Bill has already been cited in the Scottish Parliament, and she’ll be giving a TEDx talk in Liverpool this coming February. It’s the kind of traction that suggests this work is moving from niche interest to something with genuine reach — and, we’d argue, genuine urgency.
Both books are available for pre-order now via https://linktr.ee/fridayseconomics, or as a bundle on the wider project Crowdfunder
We’d encourage anyone working in community wealth building, social enterprise or place-based economic development to take a proper look at Jess’ work on her Connectioning website or her Substack — it’s one of the more thorough attempts we’ve seen at mapping what’s already working, and connecting the people doing it.
Watch out for our own community wealth building work via our events starting in September 2026 or on our Circular Futures Collective project