The importance of purpose

‘We are really pleased with our revenues but our goal isn’t to make money. It sounds a little flippant, but it’s the truth. Our goal and what makes us excited is to make great products. If we are successful people will like them and if we are operationally competent, we will make money’.

Sir Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of industrial design at Apple. Source: Wired.

When I read this quote from Mr. Ive I could not help but remember my own words some months ago:

You are totally right, we create and sell jewelry… but not only that. We generate and share contents, collaborate with other artisans, do our best to spread and develop Steampunk, etc. Jewelry is very important, but it is not the main purpose of Decimononic. Its main purpose, and that is what we wanted to highlight, is to put into value the singularity of each person. In fact we could stop making jewelry tomorrow and Decimononic would make sense yet.

Just to put a hackneyed example, let’s think about Apple and its motto ‘Think Different’. Apple is a technology company, but its goal goes far beyond. Obviously we are not so daring to compare ourselves with Apple, but we do think that ideas come first. Our motto is ‘True Singularity’ and we try to remain faithful to it.

In a nutshell, meaning beyond profit.