How Connecting with “Why” Propels Purpose-Driven Innovation
Managing organizations in an intentional way will open avenues for innovation and connect our work with greater purpose.
This week I have been immersing myself in how purpose fuels innovation. In a report about The Business Case for Purpose, EY found that companies with a strong sense of purpose are able to transform and innovate better, yielding greater revenue growth compared to those who don’t. Part of this is because more employees are searching for jobs with meaning; connecting meaning with their work motivates them to creatively solve problems for their customers.
About 15 years ago I was demonstrating my new telepresence solution to Pepsi’s CEO, Steve Reinemund. We had created a virtual boardroom experience where the technology fell away, leaving participants in 2 “half” rooms in Palo Alto and Singapore to feel as though they were all in the same room together. Steve turned to his colleague and said, “Wow, with this I could make it to my son’s soccer game!” That became my motivation — to give people the gift of time and allow them to be at home with their families — and it spurred me through many late nights as we developed our innovation into a thriving business.
Purpose driven innovation connects your efforts with why it is important that you, your team and your organization solve a particular problem. These may be separate purposes. E.g. for my telepresence solution:
- The trend towards globalization was increasing the need for geographically dispersed teams to work together (the market problem)
- Our company had recently acquired a network business and wanted to integrate it with other technologies we owned like imaging to create new value (the company problem)
- Executives at large multinational companies were increasingly required to be in 2 places at once on other sides of the world; they needed the intimacy of face-to-face to ensure strategy was executed quickly and accurately (the customer problem)
- We were part of a new business innovation team challenged with discovering new growth paths for the company (the team problem)
- I was a new mom, wanting to stay working in a job that inspired me and at the same time, step up to my new role to raise happy, healthy daughters (my problem)
I do an exercise with the teams I work with to help them discover their “why”, focusing on the value their company brings to their customer and the value their team brings to their company. This works especially well at the end of a team’s first innovation learning loop where they are trying to connect the dots from what they discovered to why it matters. If you want to hear more about how to conduct this exercise with your teams, reply to this email and let me know.
One of the thought leaders around connecting to your “Why” is Simon Seneck, “Start With Why”. Rebecca Henderson talks a lot about sustainable business and reimagining capitalism (listen to her interview for some weekend inspiration). And I really enjoyed Carolyne Webb’s book “How to Have a Good Day”; after reading it I started writing my “why” next to every goal I set so that I could clearly associate my purpose with the big things I was trying to achieve.
If you are ready to explore purpose-driven innovation, hit reply or read more about hiring an Innovation Coach for your team.
