Tears rolled down the cheeks of this man in his sixties, sitting in the middle of a huge garden: he was seeing colors for the first time in his life!
From Core to Care Business
This was last week. This man told me he was color-blind and that, for a week now, he had been seeing the full range of colors. All his life, he'd seen the world in dull colors, and, suddenly, this blooming garden became a festival of colors. The richness and beauty of the world left him beatified.
I knew what was happening to him. He was wearing the “magical” glasses designed for colorblind people which enable them, for the first time in their lives, to move from a "flat" world to experiencing a full color one. Wonderful and so moving!
A few years ago, I was the one crying while watching "color for the colorblind", a short documentary which allows to "See what happens when colorblind people see color for the first time ever".
What interested me is that these glasses where developed by a Paint Company, Valspar, in partnership with EnChroma, an expert company in high performance glasses.
My question was: WHY would a paint company be interested in developing glasses? How did they think about that? I can hear the little voice in your head and the comment we so often hear from people: it is not their core business!
It may not be their core Business. But their Purpose is to create colors.
So, when the people managing the VALSPAR Paint Company in Minnesota (USA) discovered that 300.000.000 people in the world were colorblind, they decided to do something about it.
They partnered with EnChroma to bring color to everyone.
That's what a Purpose can be: a meaningful orientation for Value-creation.
Instead of remaining prisoner of a definition of a core Business - manufacturing and selling paint - Valspar moved into the bigger space of a meaningful purpose: help people get more pleasure out of their Life by making it colorful.
They moved from CORE to CARE Business.
They teamed with experts in Physiology, Vision, glasses manufacturers and finally came up with those glass windows conceived in such a way that they would solve the problem in an affordable way.
Since then, people working for Valspar know why they get up in the morning and are proud to go to work. They enjoy Corporate Pride!
Their "care" business is closely related to their core Business. Yet with an additional dimension of "doing good to people".
Even if they only reached 10% of the population concerned, this means they already would change the life of 30.000.000 people overnight!
Purpose gives much more than "meaning" to a company.
It also enlarges their opportunity space, their Innovation space, and most of the time, their profit space. They move from focusing on income to focusing on Outcomes, i.e. Purposeful Innovation and meaningful Value Creation for all stakeholders.
They become best "For the world".
What would it give if you'd break free from the idea of best IN the world to being "the best FOR the world"?
Could you escape some sort of corporate blindness?
Could you open up new innovation space related to the creation of goods and services that improve ordinary people's lives?
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