What's Your Why? Innovation on Purpose

Written By: TARA NESBITT Sr. Partner Marketing Manager, Amplitude

If you know me, you would know that I spend a lot of time thinking about things that are a bit ordinary from an extraordinary point of view. When I think about innovation in the past year, I think about it through a brand’s “why”. It’s all about the “Golden Circle”. The Golden Circle was first introduced and

described by Simon Sinek during a TEDx Talk in 2009. In his talk, Sinek explains that the most successful businesses in the world “think, act and communicate” the same way and that this way is diametrically opposed to that of less successful brands.

Imagine you owned a brick-and-mortar at the beginning of 2020. Your business would have undoubtedly faced many challenges in the past 18 months. Fortunately, Shopify found their “why” as a brand and quickly stepped in with tools that empowered businesses to launch online operations overnight by converting point of sale terminals into e-commerce stores.

In 2020, we saw not only the effects of a global pandemic but also racial injustice in America. While many brands did things in the moment to address these injustices, Netflix has fully leaned in and made considerable investments around building a programming strategy that is central to Black audiences. They have continued to highlight the Black perspective well beyond the stereotypical storyline and role.

This past year, we saw innovation in many sizes and one of the smallest forms of innovations came at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference 2021 with Focus Mode. This small innovation in a world with so much noise and distractions has allowed users to personalize and reduce notifications in a world that feels always on.

So what is the connection between Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle” and these short snippets of innovation from Shopify, Netflix, and Apple? These brands know how to do ordinary innovation, solely based on why they exist; Shopify’s purpose is to provide a platform for business owners to start, grow and manage a business, Netflix’s purpose is to entertain the world and Apple’s purpose is to create products that enrich people’s lives. It’s the extraordinary innovation that they each demonstrated this past year through their ability to use their “why” to reimagine what is.