Fit for Purpose — Designing Business Around What Truly Matters
This is a very practical blog post, focusing on business value creation.
Returning to Lund University Master’s program of Entrepreneurship and Innovation for the 14th consecutive year, I stood in front of the class of 2026 and asked them a simple, but slightly unsettling question in one of my lessons:
What has business been designed to optimise over the past decades?
If we are completely honest with ourselves, most companies have been optimised for short-term financial performance and narrowly defined customer jobs-to-be-done — very often without fully accounting for the ecological and social externalities that follow.
In the age of the Anthropocene, this value creation formula is no longer sufficient.
In a time shaped by accelerating megatrends, planetary boundaries, systemic inequality, technological disruption, and shifting expectations of business, the question is no longer whether companies need to change their approach to value creation — but how.
This is where the Fit for Purpose Model comes in.
The Fit for Purpose Model — A Strategic Design Framework
The Fit for Purpose Model is a systemic strategy and design framework to help leaders align their business with the deeper context in which it operates.
I developed it to better approach challenging, transformative strategic client projects (originally to create a high-level design view) and presented it as part of my book Better Business Better Future (2022). I have personally found the model extremely useful. It works as a great workshop tool for leadership teams in strategy processes (mapping past, present and future). It is also a great tool for a rapid analysis of incumbents, as well as for the rapid design and iteration of new ventures.
At its core, it asks five deceptively simple questions:
- WHY — What is your higher purpose?
- WHAT — What do you offer? (Products, services, value propositions)
- WHO — For whom? (Customers and key stakeholders)
- WHERE — In which markets and ecosystems?
- HOW — Through which operating model, culture, governance and capabilities?
But the model does not start with the company itself. It starts one level higher — in the ecosystemic context.
What are the systemic challenges, tensions, or “big problems” shaping the environment in which your organisation operates?
A company that ignores this layer risks optimising internally while becoming irrelevant externally. A company that understands this layer can design itself consciously in response. It can even design itself as part of the solution to one of the many big challenges of our world and society. Around what truly matters!
Example 1: Tony’s Chocolonely — Confronting a Broken System
Tony’s Chocolonely did not start with “Let’s make great chocolate.” They started with a systemic injustice: the cocoa industry is structurally linked to modern slavery and child labour.
Let’s apply the elements of the Fit for Purpose model to understand their business design (note that this is my interpretation based on available online videos and texts; I’m sure the company doesn’t mind being displayed as a good example):
Ecosystemic Context
”Things aren’t being shared evenly in the chocolate supply chain. The chain starts with millions of farmers who produce cocoa and ends with the billions of consumers who enjoy chocolate. But what about the bit in the middle? This section is dominated by a handful of chocolate giants that profit from keeping the price of cocoa as low as possible. As a result, farmers are forced to live in poverty. And that leads to illegal child labour and modern slavery.”
Big Problem
Slave labour and inequality are embedded in the supply chain.
WHY
To make 100% exploitation-free chocolate the norm.
WHAT
- Chocolate bars — deliberately designed with uneven pieces to symbolise inequality in the cocoa industry.
- “We are a bit of a rebel with a change agenda… We offer great-tasting, exploitation-free chocolate in different flavours, with uniquely designed chocolate bars aiming to challenge and change our industry.”
WHO
- The choco-fans that we help enjoy good and exploitation-free chocolate.
- The cacao bean farmers, whom we help earn a living wage, and enjoy better lives.
- Employees, who make this whole journey possible
WHERE
- Source cacao beans from co-ops in West Africa, with whom they collaborate closely with, long-term.
- Production facility is located in Belgium, which is the home of some of the finest chocolate in the world.
- Distribution to end-users goes through retail in Western Europe and the US.
- Head office is located in the Netherlands.
HOW
An advocate of exploitation-free chocolate across and beyond our business ecosystem. Apply five key principles:
- traceable beans,
- a higher price,
- strong farmers,
- long-term collaborations,
- improved quality and productivity
Tony’s is profitable. But profitability is in service of purpose — not the other way around. That is Fit for Purpose in action.
Example 2: IKEA — Scaling Purpose in a Global System
IKEA operates at an entirely different scale than Tony’s Chokolonely. In spite of the increasing complexity, let’s make this summary even more straightforward. Again, as to my own interpretation based on available online sources and my own knowledge of the company.
Ecosystemic Context
Mass consumption of home furnishings, resource depletion, and climate impact from materials and logistics.
Big Problem
How to make sustainable living affordable and accessible at scale.
WHY
“To create a better everyday life for the many people.”
This purpose has gradually expanded to include climate, circularity, and regenerative ambitions.
WHAT
Affordable, well-designed home furnishings are increasingly based on renewable and recycled materials.
WHO
The “many people” — a deliberately broad, price-sensitive global segment.
WHERE
Global markets with complex supply chains.
HOW
- Flat-pack design, scale efficiencies, long-term supplier relationships, investments in renewable energy, circular pilots.
IKEA illustrates something essential: Fit for Purpose does not require being small or niche. It requires coherence between purpose, strategy, and operating model.
Below, an expanded analysis of IKEA utilising the Fit for Purpose Model canvas.
What Makes the Fit for Purpose Model Powerful?
The Fit for Purpose Model is not just an analytical lens. It is a design logic and template.
When used with entrepreneurs or executive teams, it does three things:
- It forces clarity about the context and big problem/s you are responding to.
- It surfaces misalignment between stated purpose and actual operations.
- It reveals strategic choices — and trade-offs — explicitly.
Many organisations claim purpose. Few have redesigned their HOW around it. This is often where the real work begins.
From Framework to Practice: The Fit for Purpose Navigator (GTP)
To make this process more accessible, I developed the Fit for Purpose Navigator — a free AI-powered strategic companion based on the model. It functions as:
- A sparring partner for early-stage entrepreneurs.
- An ideation tool for purpose-led innovation.
- A reflection mirror for established organisations.
- A structured guide for experimenting with new business designs.
It does not replace leadership judgment. Rather, it enhances strategic thinking by making the systemic layers visible.
NB. The GPT will currently not provide a correct graphical template, but only a text format.
Given you have a ChatGPT/OpenAI login, you can access it here >>
A Reflective Invitation
Now, you may think that neither Tony’s Chokolonely nor IKEA are particularly life-affirming or life-changing, or even necessary to human life. But what if you applied the Fit for Purpose model to your context instead and see where that leads you?
Pause for a moment and reflect:
- What ecosystem are you truly part of?
- What systemic tension are you responding to?
- Is your business model structurally aligned with your purpose?
- Or is purpose still orbiting around an unchanged core?
The secret of change, as Dan Millman wrote, is not to fight the old — but to build the new…
Fit for Purpose is not about moralising business. It is about redesigning value creation so that relevance, resilience, and responsibility reinforce each other. In a world where complexity is accelerating, and trust in institutions is fragile, alignment becomes strategy. And alignment begins with clarity of purpose.
If you would like to explore how your organisation might become more future-fit — or if you are designing a new venture from scratch — the Fit for Purpose Model offers a structured place to begin.
Because ultimately it starts with you.
About the author
Elisabet Lagerstedt
Elisabet Lagerstedt is the founder and director of Future Navigators. As a trusted advisor, consultant, and Executive Coach, she helps business leaders navigate beyond business as usual to build Better Business and co-create a better future - through insight, strategy, innovation, and transformation. Elisabet is also the author of Better Business, Better Future (2022) and Navigera in i Framtiden (2018).