These thoughts echo two key themes we heard at Innovation Realized:
1. Think big — and think long term.
Thus was a message delivered by Anima La Voy, who heads Airbnb’s social impact experiences.
Today, Airbnb is recalibrating its worldview beyond short-term profits to what its CEO calls an “infinite time horizon.” As Anima told us, when you’re thinking on a global scale — beyond a single generation, let alone a single earnings report — you’re forced to take on big problems that affect a range of different stakeholders. You’re forced to make disruption work for you.
Today, the speed of that disruption can leave your head spinning. Business models of the past can barely keep pace today, and certainly won’t keep up tomorrow. Leaders can’t afford to wait around for someone else to find the answer. They have to leverage what they do well to build a world that works better.
That idea was at the heart of the second message we heard at Innovation Realized.
2. Build your purpose on your core strengths.
Use what you already do well as a foundation for innovating and driving purpose-driven growth.
Rob van Leen is the chief innovation officer for Royal DSM, a global firm that uses science to improve health, nutrition, and sustainable materials. DSM has used what it has long done well — scientific innovation — as a springboard to transform itself from a coal mining company into a world leader in fighting climate change and malnutrition.
As Rob told us, you may have to change your business model, but that doesn’t mean giving up your company’s core competencies. You may have to find new ways to collaborate, but that doesn’t mean forgoing your competitive edge. In fact, in a disrupted and uncertain environment, an ability to collaborate is precisely what makes you competitive.
Whether it’s skeptical shareholders or cynical observers who question your motives, Rob warns that you’ll inevitably encounter headwinds on your purpose journey. But uniting under a common purpose and staying the course, as DSM has done, is worth it. Here’s a look at how Rob and other leaders have united money and meaning:
For leaders who share EY’s core belief that business has a responsibility to a broad set of stakeholders, including society as a whole, the UN Sustainable Development Goals are a useful tool for companies to bake purpose into their business model.
But the global goals aren’t the only tool. Many different threads can tie together profit and purpose. When it comes to guiding an organization in disruptive times — the task for leaders today — the challenge is figuring out which thread you’ll use and how you’ll use it. No matter the thread, thinking big and building your purpose on what you do well provides both the aspirational vision and the practical foundation to make it real.
As Rob and Anima told us, there are few more effective tools to build a culture of innovation than uniting experience and expertise with a deeply held sense of purpose.
Leaders today are thinking big. They’re rejecting constraining notions of disruption happening to us in favor of making disruption work for us. They’re taking what they do well and using it to do a little good. And in doing so, they’re showing how purposeful businesses can put both money and meaning at their core.
Summary
Leading organizations make disruption work for them by thinking long term and building their purpose on their core strengths.
