The Glossary
The Controlled Vocabulary
The discipline's controlled vocabulary, core concepts, laws, models and principles, each with a verbatim definition and source citation.
v1.0 · July 2026I
Institutional Amnesia
Core conceptThe loss of access to useful organisational knowledge when it is not recorded, shared, findable or transferable across people, teams and systems. It can become …
Paper 001
Institutional Intelligence
Core conceptThe organisational capability to preserve collective memory, connect distributed knowledge, reason across people and systems, and continuously improve decisions…
Paper 002
O
Operational Memory
The Three MemoriesThe organisation's transactional record, ERP, CRM, finance, warehouse. It answers "What happened?" Complete and shallow: it records every transaction and explai…
Papers 001, 004
Organisational Memory
The Three MemoriesThe organisation's record of how it works, meetings, emails, documents, policies, processes. It answers "How do we work?" Rich and stale: it describes how work …
Papers 001, 004
T
The Five Mechanisms of Forgetting
ModelHow institutional amnesia operates: Departure, Fragmentation, Invisibility, Decay, Repetition.
Paper 001
The Five Pillars
ModelThe five tests of the capability: Memory (can the organisation remember, independent of any individual?), Understanding (can it interpret what it stores?), Reas…
Paper 002
The Five-to-Six Crossing
Maturity modelThe transition where the current decade's value concentrates: from memory that answers to memory that reasons. Age Five asks its memory questions; Age Six lets …
Paper 003
The Intelligence Equation
ModelInstitutional Intelligence = Memory + Context + Reasoning + Learning + Governance. AI is deliberately absent from the equation: AI is the enabler, not the defin…
Paper 002
The Intelligence Loop
ModelThe lifecycle of every agent, workflow and department: Observe → Understand → Recommend → Approve → Execute → Learn, and back to Observe. The Approve step is st…
Paper 002
The Intelligence Pyramid
ModelThe hierarchy on which every organisation exists somewhere: Data → Information → Knowledge → Experience → Intelligence → Reasoning → Judgement → Action. Almost …
Paper 002
The Maurice Principle
PrincipleEvery organisation holds some knowledge that is not fully documented. Institutional Intelligence aims to reduce avoidable loss and make important knowledge easi…
Papers 001, 004
The Seven Ages
Maturity modelThe stages through which organisations evolve, in sequence, on evidence: One, Hero (knowledge lives inside people); Two, Process (knowledge becomes repeatable);…
Paper 003
The Seven Laws
LawsThe discipline's axioms, canonical wording v1.0. I: Organisations do not become intelligent by adopting AI; they become intelligent by making knowledge availabl…
Paper 002
The Six Duties of Memory Stewardship
ModelThe operating disciplines of memory as capital: Capture, Curate, Connect, Protect, Refresh, Retire.
Paper 004