Christopher Murphy · 3 August, 2020

Our mission fundamentally changed over an intensive week (4–10 May, 2020) thanks to a number of cornerstone conversations with members of the The School of Design Slack community.

Here is how I now define The School of Design:

The School of Design is a community for design-focused entrepreneurs, building the products of tomorrow.

We're focused on emphasising two critical and related ideas:

  1. We need to sell value, not time. (Value is (potentially) unlimited, time is limited.)
  2. We need to retain the value we create and ****leverage it through businesses we own so that we are the ones who realise its value.

In addition to the above, I believe aligning with your life's purpose is fundamental to success.

Aligning with your core values allows you to pursue your business mission with a deep sense of purpose. This is something I'll be stressing to everyone that joins us on the The School of Design programme.

I'm keeping the × life part of the design × business × life equation private until members join, leaving it in complicates the pitch.

Purpose-Focused Business

I believe the businesses that are most likely to succeed in this millennium, sit at the intersection of design, business and life. They return to the principles that underpinned many of the businesses of the past: people first, planet second, profit third. My belief in this has been further underlined by the COVID-19 crisis.

We will, when we emerge from this, judge companies on their records: good and bad.

The businesses I want to help, create beautifully designed products, which they sell at business-sustaining price points and they are aligned to a deep sense of purpose. Here are some examples:

Brands like these are mission-focused. They have a deep sense of purpose, aligned with their founders’ beliefs.

When you're embarking on your business journey, it’s important to think: What’s my mission? What’s my purpose? What drives me? What gets me out of bed in the morning?