Scaling with Purpose Kit: How Purpose Fuels Innovation

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Steven Skash** (0:17)
Well, come back to The Bliss Business Podcast series Scaling with Purpose, our bite-size episodes where we explore how to embed purpose into every level of your organization. I'm Steven Skash here with Tulio, Syragusa, and Ashmar. Hey, guys.

**Ashmar** (0:33)
Hello.

**Tulio Syragusa** (0:34)
It's good to be here.

**Steven Skash** (0:37)
All right. So today we're diving into how purpose fuels innovation. And we'll explore how a strong sense of purpose can inspire creativity and innovation allowing organizations to evolve naturally. Let's get started. So maybe people don't realize this, but purpose and innovation, they're deeply connected when we feel that clear sense of why work matters. We're more likely to think outside the box and come up with ideas that align with those goals.

**Tulio Syragusa** (1:08)
Exactly. And you know, purpose creates a focus for creativity. Think about what it would be like to try to innovate new ideas, be curious about solving things or finding creative ways of doing things. If you don't have something you're striving towards, like an end goal or something that gives meaning behind even actually being creative or collaborating. So it really gives teams a shared vision to strive for, and it encourages collaboration. And in many cases, it actually helps to push the boundaries in ways that feel meaningful because you're trying to achieve something to support something that's a belief, that's something strong, that's rooted in a common goal. So this is what we want to explore, and it's how to become purpose-driven to drive innovation, because it really does, if you do it right, really can help drive tremendous innovation.

**Steven Skash** (2:01)
Yeah. So let's talk about why purpose is such a powerful driver innovation. I think when employees understand and connect to the organization's purpose, it really does spark intrinsic motivation. They're not just working to meet quotas or whatever the next deadline is you're working on. You're kind of driven by a desire to make meaningful impact. And a lot of times, this is maybe why they came to your company to begin with. It's because you had a very clearly defined purpose, and that was something they wanted to be about. So this mindset naturally leads to creativity and innovation.

**Ashmar** (2:39)
You know, exactly, Steve. I mean, think of companies like Tesla, for example. Their purpose is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. That vision inspires everything they do, from designing electric vehicles, to innovating in energy storage. The clarity of their purpose fuels constant innovation. You know, purpose aligns efforts. It creates a shared focus, allowing teams to innovate in ways that are consistent with the company's mission. Without purpose, innovation can feel scattered or aimless. With purpose, it becomes intentional and even impactful.

**Steven Skash** (3:14)
Yeah, I think, you know, Tesla is a good example. There are a lot of companies where you know, one thing they get right is this sort of vision of purpose that everyone can kind of rally around. So let's dive into some actionable ways organizations can leverage that purpose to build innovation. Let's go through. We've got three strategies here I want to cover. Tulio, start us off.

**Tulio Syragusa** (3:38)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, strategy number one, it's not putting everybody in the room and saying, you're not coming out of here until you come up with some innovative way of doing things, right?
No, it's actually about creating a safe space to experiment. So purpose-driven innovation thrives in environments where employees feel safe to take risk, because experimentation and risk go hand in hand. You can't have experimentation if you fear failure. And so, I mean, I always think of this idea of the way science discovers everything, even cures or vaccines and things of that sort, is through a process of many, many failures, right? And those failures are part of the success equation. And this is the shift that needs to happen, right? So leaders need to encourage experimentation by framing those failures as learning opportunities. It's kind of like the story of the person that's an overnight success, right? But maybe it's been 20 years of start and stop and trial and errors and fine-tuning their craft and learning a lot more along the way till they had that overnight success. And it's the same way when it comes to experimenting in creating purposeful innovation to support a company's purpose. So it's about having a healthy outcome where teams feel empowered, that they can test, and they can approach things in a way that doesn't feel like they're going to get slapped for taking a risk or failing, but they're constantly learning. And this is the key to aligning all these efforts of innovations with purpose. In fact, companies like Google, Google has had a history of this kind of environment. They're a very purpose-driven organization, and in fact, their purpose is to organize the world's information. That's their purpose, right? And they've succeeded at that purpose, but employees are also encouraged to dedicate 20% of their time to side projects. Now, in a 40-hour work week, that's like eight hours, right? But most people end up working more than 40 hours, so you technically are carving out an entire day to side projects. So it's like they're working four days at work, four days a week, and one day a week is just side projects. Now, why would an organization do this? Because they know that through that experimentation and through the freedom of creativity and innovation, innovation is born out of that, right? If it's tied to supporting that purpose, organizing the world's information, then innovations like Gmail and Google Maps comes out of that and many other things that they have innovated over the years.