From the onset of the new millennium, business leaders have been increasingly interested in ‘purpose’—the idea that they might look beyond the profit motive alone to consider why the business exists and what purpose it serves.
The idea was given popular force by business author Simon Sinek, whose 2009 book Start with Why visualised business purpose as a ‘Golden Circle’—actually, three concentric circles, with WHY in the inside circle, HOW in the middle and WHAT in the outside circle.