Mission has been busy for a long time. We hint at it already in our name. When we started in 2001, we wanted to dig a little deeper than many of our competitors. Fifteen years later, we examined the current trends and thoughts in the international business landscape, including the US, and we clearly saw the role that purpose had come to play.

Back on our own turf in Norway, core values have dominated in business for almost 30 years. So why is it that we're at Mission focus on purpose? The answer is that purpose goes deeper than values alone, even though they ideally work together. Purpose tells you something about why a company exists and what the company wants to achieve in the world. Purpose says something about personality and inner will, while values often consist of a slightly general wishful thinking or a somewhat approximate proclamation.

We believed an awareness and understanding about purpose is not as widespread in Norway as it should be. This was the seed that made us want to study Norwegian companies a little further: What is particularly meaningful to them? What do they say about themselves? What purpose do they have with everything they do?

Our own professional curiosity eventually led us to write a newfangled report that tested some of our theories about purpose in the Norwegian leading brands and businesses.

The Mission Purpose Report 2017

There were three main themes we concentrated on when we initiated a survey amongst 100 of the largest Norwegian companies, a work that eventually culminated in what we call The Mission Purpose Report 2017 .

We investigated the following:

Are Norwegian companies able to differentiate themselves by means of values?
How many Norwegian companies have defined their own purpose?
What is the profitability of the companies that have defined their purpose compared to those that haven't?

These were a set of questions that gave us some very interesting answers.

Key contributor at Design Management Conference in Oslo 2017

At the same time as we laid the foundation for the report, it was announced that DMI - Design Management Institute, based in Boston, MA - had a very opportune event in Oslo for the first time in history. Mission's CEO Bård Annweiler was given the opportunity to present our findings for interesting, top-shelf professionals from all over the world, as well as to lead an interactive breakout, demonstrating Mission's unique process and criteria used to define company purpose.

From Mission's breakout at the Design Management Conference 2017. Photo: DMI

The conference took place at Norway's Centre for Design and Arcitecture DOGA. The conference had a number of international lead designers and design directors visiting from companies like Johnson & Johnson, Google, Lufthansa, SEB and the US Federal State Government, as well as published lecturers and researchers from renowned institutions and universities from Norway to New Zealand.

From the Design Management Conference 2017 in Oslo. Photo: DMI

It became apparent that the Norwegian results that Mission presented to this knowledgable audience mirrored what many expected to be true in their respective home countries. Following from this, Mission has already been given a standing invitation to come and speak at events in both Madrid and San Francisco, both excellent opportunities and platforms for further spreading the significance of purpose.

Not a bad word about innovation or disruption, but isn't it time to get a deeper clarity as to why you're in business?

A representative from a New Zealand based company stated that the Mission Purpose Report was a very strong one that could just as well have been written for New Zealand. This shows that the topic of purpose is a global one. The strange thing may not be that our domestic Norwegian numbers and thoughts may feel so universal. The strange thing is why most business conferences in Norway and Scandinavia do not speak of purpose. Not a bad word about innovation or disruption , a topic that is often discussed at such events, but isn't it time to get a deeper clarity as to why you're in business?

Surveys show that there's more to it than money to the modern job seeker . Working for a company that has a direction and a purpose that resonates with the applicant turns out to be far more important. Companies that have defined their "why's", find like-minded talent a lot easier.

And that's what it's all about. To communicate with the outside world: What you find the at the core of yourself is what you need to use to reach the farthest in the world outside you.

Extracts of findings in The Mission Report 2017

Norwegian companies are unable to stand out with core values alone. The report shows that values such as Accountability and Reliability are used by 16 of the 100 largest Norwegian companies.
There are many ways to define purpose and you should not be afraid to play with words. We present 20 different companies that all have very different purpose statements.
Based on our five criteria for defining purpose, we can conclude that the purposes of the Norwegian companies Hydro, Yara, Nordic Choice Hotels, EVRY and Hurtigruten are meaningful.Download your free copy of The Mission Purpose Report today.
There are a number of benefits of having a strong purpose. We give you the top eight ones you should focus on first.
We show you the five main reasons why we are seeing a switch to modern consumers who expect companies to have a defined purpose.