The mission is what the company is aiming to achieve that will have the side effect of making a profit. An obvious example is Apple's mission to make an out of

The mission is what the company is aiming to achieve that will have the side effect of making a profit. An obvious example is Apple's mission to make an out of this world almost magic phone (back when the iPhone came out), and profits followed. But get a bunch of execs and say "mission: make money" wouldn't unleash the required creativity to do something like this. Instead they'd be cutting costs on iPod manufacturing or something lackluster like that.