If you want a guarantee, buy a refrigerator!

Rita McGrath
7 min readApr 16, 2024

The concept of purpose has been having quite a moment — from books heralding its importance to claims that it holds the key to the hearts and minds of Gen Z workers to claims from consultants that we can “unleash the power of organizational purpose to transform productivity and profitability.” But how exactly should we be thinking about this?

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Rita McGrath

Columbia Business School Professor. Thinkers50 top 10 & #1 in strategy. Bestselling author of The End of Competitive Advantage & Seeing Around Corners.