Last week, I joined 650 innovators in London for our latest Virgin Disruptors event. Kicking off the day, I took to the stage alongside Blockchain co-founder Peter Smith, The LADbible founder Solly Solomou, EnterpriseJungle founder Emma Sinclair, and our host, Emergent CEO Holly Ransom for a fascinating discussion about people and businesses creating change.

It was a lively panel, which turned into a heated debate on entrepreneurship, innovation and disruption. Watch the video below for all the action.  

As you can see, Peter and Emma disagreed on pretty much everything (in the best possible way!), Solly urged us to find hungry people and empower them, and I challenged the audience to challenge themselves to take a break and refresh. Together, we came to the conclusion that purpose is fundamental in disrupting and innovating, and ultimately creating change.

It doesn't matter if you are David facing Goliath, if you have a clear purpose, you can achieve great things – all you have to do is start small and scale. That’s what we did with Virgin Atlantic. We started with one plane, and a simple idea to reintroduce glamour and excitement back into flying. We planted an acorn.

The acorn analogy was continually used throughout the panel and the day’s event – as it perfectly applies to both creating a successful business and creating change. Whenever we feel that what we are doing is diminutive or insignificant, we should all remember that from a tiny acorn, a mighty oak tree grows. We all have the ability to start something simple, and grow it into something great, if there is a clear purpose behind our actions.

Whether you are seeking to disrupt an industry or innovate to create a whole new market, it’s so important that you have a clear cut purpose. Purpose spurs passion, which fans the sparks that light the fires that fuel change