Purpose Driven Innovation: Serendipitous Passion or Arranged Marriage?

Innovation Acceleration: Unleashing the Power of Great People and Organizations, an inside-out view of the greatest innovation practitioners, leaders, and organizations delivering extraordinary value creation globally. We have briefly covered how gratitude and contradictions impact innovation. Today we examine the roles of passion and purpose.

Innovation is often romanticized. From flashes of brilliance to the great works of the lone genius, we dream of superhuman powers and transformational breakthroughs. The realities of innovation execution are much less glamorous and more painful. Yet imagination, passion and purpose, while not sufficient on their own, are essential components in the journeys of successful innovators.

Why Innovation Purpose Matters

The most innovative people and organizations are not the greatest, most dominant in their fields or industries. This is not to say that innovation does not matter. It simply says that how well you scale innovation matters most. Innovations without purpose are much like fireworks, loudly popping and flashing exciting colors only to scatter in multiple directions and fade away into oblivion.

Purpose is critical for successful innovations because it provides directional guidance to the innovation leader and team. As we attempt to create the future, the innovation journey is highly uncertain and filled with distractions, dangerous detours, and dead ends. Without the directional guidance provided by purpose, we are likely to get lost, quit prematurely, or perish. The right innovation purpose establishes wide guide rails that allow for imagination and extensive experimentation without loss of direction. It creates a channel for innovations to align and build on each other, increasing momentum and effectively scaling new ideas that create value.

Innovation purpose also plays a key role in revealing, guiding, and focusing our passions. In fact, purpose and passion are so deeply intertwined that, semantical differences notwithstanding, we often use the terms interchangeably when it comes to innovation. If purpose is the north star and compass, passion is the fuel; but with the caveat that there is a continuous feedback loop between them. Purpose feeds the correctly aligned passions that fuel us in the journey and accelerate innovations in the right direction. Purposeful innovations are scaled faster and create much greater levels of financial and/or social value.  

Innovation Purpose: Serendipitous Passion or Arranged Marriage?

Through several decades of corporate innovation leadership, one of my most surprising findings has been that the majority of people are unhappy at work. And in the context where I have led innovation acceleration, these are well paid professionals. Money is not a key driver for their dissatisfaction. The main issue is that their life and work purposes are either unknown or severely misaligned.

So, how do successful innovators find their purpose?

Purpose can come about through random exploration, chance encounter, serendipitous passion. We can simply stumble on a purpose worth pursuing - a calling or vision that touches our soul, gives us meaning, and pulls us in a certain direction. Our newly found sense of purpose is uninhibited by challenges and does not fade away over time. Instead, it grows stronger and matures as we march on our journey.

Possible, but unlikely.

Most people will never hit the innovation purpose jackpot in the lottery of life and work. Worse yet, they will think of themselves as unlucky or unworthy and stop trying altogether; accepting the inevitability of mediocrity and settling for dreams of a better life after retirement. That is indeed a sad and nihilistic work and life conclusion, if it were not flawed.

By observing thousands of successful innovation practitioners in multiple industries and countries, it has become clear to me that discovering our purpose, what we are meant to do, looks a lot less like serendipitous passion and much more like an arranged marriage that works.

Successful innovators rarely experience “love at first sight.” They most often struggle with the problem or opportunity longer and harder than any other person would ever care for. Over time, tribulations, failures, and a few doses of success, they develop an affinity for it. They are continuously challenged by it. They find and see the value in it. They never quite conquer it. But it gives them meaning. It fulfills them. It becomes the purpose of their life, and work.

Simply working hard on something is not a guarantee that you will fall in love with it. But it does reveal whether a potential passion is real or just a superficial interest that crumbles under the ardor of commitment. Innovation purpose embodies the disciplined pursuit of our true passions.

Tips for Finding or Developing Your Innovation Purpose

From young students confused by having too many passions (or superficial interests) to seasoned professionals unhappily going through the motions of their work, finding a purpose that aligns our life and work is a formidable challenge.

Most people never stop and reflect on their passions and purpose. They are carried away by the currents of their jobs and lives. They inevitably find themselves in places they did not want to be, usually unhappy.

Here are three steps to help identify, validate, or align life and work passions and purpose:

1 - Create Your Life Passions Inventory

Identify 20 to 30 different passions in your life. Don’t try to be practical or judgmental with your list. Cooking, boating, travelling, coaching people or sports are all good, potential passions.

Add to your list of passions by answering:

-       What did you want to be when you were 10 years old?

-       What are you curious about?

-       What makes you happy?

-       What are you naturally talented or good at?

-       What do you want to do when you retire?

-       What would you do if you had more money than you can spend?

2 - Prioritize Your Potential Passions

This is a very personal, intuition-based assessment that demands a high level of self-awareness. First, reflect on and roughly rank each passion in your list.

To help prioritize further, ask yourself about each of your top 10 passions:

-       If I commit to this, can I become really good at it?

-       If I commit to this, can I create significant financial or social value?

If you answer ‘yes’ to both questions, these passions will rank higher as potential innovation purposes.

3 - Work Hard on Top Passions to Validate Your Innovation Purpose

Find opportunities to intentionally and deliberately practice your top 2 or 3 passions. Commit or volunteer your time to practice them often and hard.

If you are an entrepreneur, build or scale business practices around these passions.

If you are an intrapreneur or work for a larger organization, align and prioritize your top passions with the work you do for the organization and its customers.

Lastly, let the ardor of commitment reveal or expose your true passions and purpose.

Your true innovation purpose may shift over time but that usually takes a decade or more.

Innovation Purpose and Commitment to Excellence

By aligning their life passions with the work they do, successful innovators test, discover, and nurture a strong sense of purpose. This powerful feedback mechanism between purpose and passion helps fuel the commitment and hard work required to create the future, to innovate.

Finding our passions is not enough. Our true innovation purpose and potential are only fully revealed, tested, and fulfilled when we commit to the challenge of scaling innovation with excellence. Innovators in a state of self-actualization are best positioned to truly change the world. In the words of Maslow, to achieve the highest level of human potential, performance, and fulfillment one must “Discover what you are meant to do and commit to the ardor of pursuing it with excellence.”

We learn, improve, and innovate together. Share your perspectives in the comments below. What are you passionate about, in life and work? How do you find purpose and alignment between life and work?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

José Pires serves as Global Excellence & Innovation executive leader and advisor for startups, scaleups, and Fortune 500 companies. His award-winning programs on culture and business transformation, innovation acceleration, leadership development, and strategy execution include more than 30,000 professionals and clients in energy, oil & gas, power generation, telecommunications, technology, finance, banking, insurance, law, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure, electronics, semiconductors, food, manufacturing, education, government and non-profit organizations in more than 20 countries.