The Papers
A developing series of working papers on organisational memory and intelligence. Each paper displays its publication status, version and citation details; the research basis and limitations should be assessed alongside its claims.
v1.0 ยท July 2026Introduces institutional amnesia as a label for organisational knowledge that becomes unavailable, and proposes three categories of organisational memory. Argues that knowledge access should be addressed before automating coordination. The claims and categories are working propositions for further research.
The formal definition, the equation, the five pillars and the Seven Laws: the canon of the discipline, versioned and citable.
A maturity model for organisational intelligence, from Hero to Autonomous, with the diagnostic every leadership team should be able to answer: which age are we in, and what evidence says so?
Memory is the first term in the Equation. The anatomy and half-life of each memory, the formal definition of the fourth, the six duties of stewardship, and how experiential memory is captured before it walks out of the building.
A longitudinal case study of Charterhouse Holdings, thirty years of evolution through the first five ages, the three memories observed in the wild, and the Maurice Principle at its source.
The treatment paper. Six movements, in sequence, governed by the Laws, that take an organisation from knowing its age to compounding its intelligence, and the anti-patterns that spend the decade's budget on not crossing.
The engineering layer. A pattern language for agent design, named, reusable solutions to recurring problems, the generation-one catalogue, composition rules, the autonomy ladder, and the anti-patterns to decline in meetings.
The reference architecture. Five layers, memory-first, specified by responsibility not product, and designed to a single survivability test, every vendor, model and platform replaceable without the organisation losing its memory.
