PSG Foundations

Oxford Economist Eric Beinhocker and others introduced the world to Complexity Economics, convincingly arguing that the pattern of change in economies is consistent with the principles of biological evolution with emergent macro-patterns that are difficult to predict from micro-observations.

Princeton Psychologist Daniel Kahneman and others have famously shown that the individuals in an economy are far from rational actors, driven instead by hardwired heuristics and learned biases.

IMD Professor Phil Rosenzweig has shown that existing business strategy is often little more than pseudoscience and myth-making, and that effective leadership requires a rigorous commitment to process and understanding of environment and of self.

Given the robust work established by Beinhocker, Kahneman, Rosenzweig and many others, we have looked beyond the design process of strategy to understand how its inputs are shaped. From our investigation, we believe that corporate strategy at the highest level is subject to the principles of evolutionary biology and developmental psychology.

Cognitive development psychologists, starting with Jung and compellingly expanded upon by Maslow, Piaget, Graves and Kegan, drew on the rich history of cognitive investigation in meditative practices to develop a 5 layered system of human psychology that when taken together with our view of corporate strategy forms the basis for the PSG Five Systems Framework.