The John Lewis Partnership, which includes Waitrose supermarkets, is 75 years old this week and is still a ‘mutual’ where profits are shared and decisions are either voted on or at least scrutinised by the staff or ‘partners’. As you can imagine this sort of business model runs stick out like a sore thumb especially amongst retailers where mutuality is considered inefficient and inflexible, but with the current state of many high street names like Marks & Spencer and the House of Frasier you have to ask if JLP have had the right model all along.