Stewarded by the Council for Enterprise Advancement

Iterative Development for
Enterprise Advancement

A cybernetic governance framework that advances the definition of enterprise, recognizes enterprises as the adaptive systems they are, and upgrades governance from direction and control to the regulatory architecture through which enterprises sustain their capacity to advance.

Governance is advancement.

Three interdependent contributions

The IDEA Standard delivers on its foundation through three contributions that are sequential and interdependent. Each builds on the one before it.

Pillar 1

Enterprise Redefined

A unifying standard that specifies scope and generalized structure, applicable to any purposeful collective endeavor at any scale. A department is an enterprise. A project is an enterprise. The same governance architecture applies recursively at every level.

Pillar 2

Cybernetic Systems Recognized

Enterprises are purposeful, adaptive, self-regulating systems composed of agents with agency. Cybernetics has existed as theory for decades. AI now makes it operationally real — enabling enterprises to be governed as the systems they actually are, for the first time.

Pillar 3

Governance Upgraded

Not direction and control alone, but the regulatory architecture through which an enterprise sustains its capacity to advance. Pervasive rather than positional. Embedded within enterprise action, not imposed upon it.

What the Standard establishes

The IDEA Standard establishes what must be true for an enterprise to remain viable, coherent, and capable of adapting under real conditions. It does not prescribe organizational forms, operational methods, or implementation steps.

Read the Foreword and Introduction →

Engage with the framework

The introductory series

Six articles establishing the framework's intellectual foundation. Published on LinkedIn.