Does Corporate Purpose Come First?

Gary Hamel makes a great point discussing the need for corporate purpose and a higher sense of purpose which establishes the incentive to abandon the past. If you don't have it, its easy for the organization to be held hostage to the past.
Alex Osterwalder adds that alignment between purpose and innovation space is needed. Too often employees "don't have a space or a home in their company to actually explore new ideas that could help make that purpose reality. ....big companies today, or established companies are at risk of losing their best innovation talent to entrepreneurship. It's never been easier to become an entrepreneur, at scale, anywhere in the world." And he also adds: "it's suicide to pursue an innovation career today in many organizations."
Might need a few words on what exactly he means by "innovation career" but my guess is he's talking about one that involves developing new business models, exploration projects, or "disruptive innovations" per Clay Christensen...not sustaining or efficiency innovations which most every large company knows how to do. v18.4