The other day I was talking with a few friends about the OpenTechSchool initiative that I am very proud to be part of. One question we were talking about, was the reason behind that whole thing and I painted this picture, the perfect world scenario in which the OpenTechSchool would cease to exist because it simply wouldn’t have any point any more. And if that would be the case I’d be happy for it to cease to exist.

This a though very strange to many people; build something that in the end makes itself obsolete. Where is your legacy then, do those people ask. But actually for almost everything I do, I make sure I have goal, a perfect world scenario in which it would simply become obsolete. And that is actually in the DNA of every company, when it has to state its “goals” in their legal papers.

More often than not, the goals simply don’t ever really are the case, because in order for them to be there, it needs on-going maintenance, like for a web-platform for example. But the mission/perfect world scenario should always be thought broader than that. The goal isn’t to run a website, the goal is unite a community. And well, when that has happened and a company isn’t needed to sustain that any longer, then the company should simply cease to exist, is it not? All good things must come to an end, so why shouldn’t companies?

So if we think of companies that way, then whatever we do, every company should be able to cease to exist because they were able or maybe even because they were unable to achieve the real goal. And no company, in the understanding of the society, should always be of such high importance that society would fall if that company falls. If we incorporate that deeper into the DNA of companies and society, we could stop worrying about making the companies work forever and instead make sure they actually do contribute something significant.