Management science and tools for building our post-industrial future

Based in Silicon Valley, the Post-Industrial Institute is an independent research institute. Our mission is to develop a post-industrial management science and tools. We put our research into practice by helping leaders build the organizations of the future.

In collaboration with industry partners, we also operate the Post-Industrial Forum, a Community of Practice for Leaders. We gather executives, investors, and founders to learn about how to build thriving organizations in the future that is emerging.

The Post-Industrial Institute was founded by Frode Odegard in 2004. Our initial mission was to reinvent Lean Management for modern knowledge-based organizations. We spent ten years helping corporates transform for improved innovation and execution across a range of complex and knowledge-intensive verticals. These included enterprise software, aerospace & defense, game development, medical devices, mobile, and mass media. Our research and fieldwork led to the development of the Lean Systems Framework, a comprehensive organizational design framework. For this work, Frode was awarded a Fellowship by the Lean Systems Society.

In 2014 we began a new chapter, observing that exponential technologies were undermining all the common assumptions in organizational design. After a study of 12,000 years of economic history, we concluded that humanity was transitioning to a post-industrial civilization. We embarked on a quest to develop a new management science with new solutions and practices suitable for the world that is now rapidly emerging.  This year we will celebrate our 20th Anniversary.