It’s rare that managers approach us just to define their company’s purpose—unless they're chasing BCorp status. Yet purpose, when properly articulated and owned, can be the solution to challenges companies don’t even realize are connected to it.

Stimulating Innovation and Identifying New Categories

In today’s shifting landscape, innovation often feels like a forced response to external pressure. But when purpose leads, innovation becomes a creative opportunity. Just look at Dyson: their purpose to fix inefficiencies reshaped entire categories, from vacuum cleaners to hair dryers to intelligent lighting.

When purpose becomes a lens for creativity, it not only guides R&D but fuels truly game-changing ideas.

Boosting Employee Motivation

Post-pandemic, workplace motivation has plummeted. Leaders everywhere are scrambling to re-engage teams. A powerful purpose is a hidden engine—uniting people around something bigger than their job description. But to be truly motivating, it must be actionable. Every employee should be able to see how they contribute and measure their impact.

At Innate Motion, we’ve built a system for this through a network of internal change makers.

Take Danone, for example. Their purpose—“bringing health through food to as many people as possible”—felt distant to departments like procurement. But after just one co-creative session with fruit growers, buyers for a small baby food brand identified how their decisions directly support the company’s mission. The result: a redesigned contracting process, and a renewed sense of meaning.

Purpose as Strategy and Therapy

Purpose can accelerate transformation, unite newly merged cultures, attract talent, and ensure that founding intentions live beyond founders. But defining it isn’t simple. It requires economic fluency, deep listening, cross-cultural sensitivity, and the rare ability to translate internal beliefs into simple, shared language.

As someone who comes from the world of strategy, I continue to be amazed at how purpose brings together disciplines—strategy, social science, empathy, and storytelling. It’s both organizational therapy and business roadmap.

At Innate Motion, our purpose is to humanize business for meaningful growth. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s this: purpose isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation every organization needs.