The Holonomics Ecosystem was created to show the connections and pathways through our book. The four major elements of holonomic thinking are: Systemic – Understanding the organisation as an organic and dynamic system of interrelated organs. Experiential – Understanding the lived experience of each person – employees, management, leadership, stakeholders and the community. Meaning – Understanding how shared meaning emerges in the organisation over time, allowing the organisation to be able to become agile, efficient and transparent – an authentic whole. Ethical – Understanding how human values are the foundation of authenticity, agility and change So in the Holonomics Ecosystem the books are generally organised together around these different elements.

1. The
Ecosystem
Explained
Simon Robinson and
Maria Moraes Robinson

2. Holonomics: Business Where People and Planet Matter is a ground-
breaking book which argues that people in business must adopt a
‘holonomic’ way of thinking, a dynamic and authentic understanding
of the relationships within a business system, and an appreciation of
the whole.
!
In January 2015 Holonomics was selected as one of Sustainable
Brands Top 36 Sustainability Books of all time, alongside both older,
well-known books like Biomimicry, Natural Capitalism and Cradle to
Cradle.
!
What lies at the heart of Holonomics is the practical implementation
of deep, profound and lasting transformational change. If we
analyse this in relation to organisations, what we often find is that the
leadership only focus on the structural aspects of strategy. The
behavioural aspects are ignored, therefore resulting in sub-optimal
execution.
An Introduction to Holonomics

3. The Holonomics Ecosystem
The Holonomics Ecosystem was created to show the connections
and pathways through our book. The four major elements of
holonomic thinking are:
!
Systemic – Understanding the organisation as an organic and
dynamic system of interrelated organs.
!
Experiential – Understanding the lived experience of each person
– employees, management, leadership, stakeholders and the
community.
!
Meaning – Understanding how shared meaning emerges in the
organisation over time, allowing the organisation to be able to
become agile, efficient and transparent – an authentic whole.
!
Ethical – Understanding how human values are the foundation of
authenticity, agility and change
!
So in the Holonomics Ecosystem the books are generally organised
together around these different elements.

4. The Ecosystem

5. The Ecosystem
The dynamic philosophy of wholeness and the dynamics of seeing come from Henri Bortoft’s The Wholeness
of Nature and Taking Appearance Seriously. These are therefore central in the ecosystem.
Henri was a physicist who studied wholeness with physicist David Bohm. He was an expert in Goethe,
phenomenology and hermeneutics, and was one of the creators of Holistic Science at Schumacher College,
teaching Simon in 2009.

6. The Ecosystem
Holonomics starts with the dynamics of seeing.
The top line refers to theories of the divided brain
and their different contributions to the way in
which comprehend reality.
!
First Steps to Seeing is by Emma Kidd, another
student of Henri.
!
The Illusion of Separation shows how
sustainability issues today are due to our
separation from nature. Holonomics is
referenced in it.
!
The bottom line links Holonomics to Henri to
Goethe. Much of our work is inspired by Goethe
in relation to how to study qualitatively in
organisations, and how to break out of theory
driven seeing using Goethe’s phenomenological
approach in The Theory of Colours and The
Metamorphosis of Plants.

7. The Ecosystem
Henri references Rudolph Steiner’s
early writings about the scientific
works of Goethe.
!
Otto Scharmer took the spiritual
aspects of Steiner’s later work into
change management. He also
interviewed Henri for Theory U.
!
This line therefore develops our
thinking about the need for a change
of consciousness in business.
This second line is The Dynamics of
Business.
!
Thomas Johnson and Anders Brömes
quote both Henri and Bohm, and we quote
Profit Beyond Measure in a number of
sections. Johnson reviewed Holonomics
and gave us permission to adapt his table
showing the shift from mechanistic thinking
to holonomic thinking.
!
Giles Hutchins wrote The Nature of
Business. His book represents that aspect
of our work taking the principles of
biomimicry into organisational design.

8. The Ecosystem
In Holonomics systems thinking plays a major role, hence the proximity of Fritjof’s new book. Holonomics
complements his work as we take a phenomenological (experiential) and hermeneutical (meaning) approach
to understanding systems in their wholeness.
!
We also quote a lot of complexity and chaos theory, including Lynn Margulis’ What is Life (which helped
inform the section on the Deep Time Walk) and Ilya Prigogine (Order Out of Chaos) who radically changes
our ideas about chaos, emergent properties and also challenges us to rethink the notion of cause and effect.
We revisit David Bohm in his book with F. David
Peat Science, Order and Creativity. This
section is all about understanding the role
paradigm shifts have played in the history of
science.
!
Arthur Koestler’s book The Sleepwalkers
focuses on the story of Copernicus, Kepler and
Galileo and shows the role creativity played in
developing our new conception of the cosmos
with the sun at the centre of the solar system.
This is all about mental models and how they
fix our world views.
The Intuitive Way of Knowing is a tribute to Brian Goodwin, great friend of
Henri and Fritjof, who also created Holistic Science and developed a
methodology for using intuition. He was one of the great complexity
scientists but died in 2009 just before Simon went to Schumacher
College.

9. The Ecosystem
This section covers ethics, mindfulness,
spirituality, values and dialogue, and
includes the work of Joseph Campbell,
as well as the programme Human Values
in Education developed by Sathya Sai
Baba which Maria studies and now
teaches.
!
Satish Kumar’s Soil, Soul, Society
represents the whole of his work. Satish
wrote the foreword for Holonomics,
describing it as a “manifesto for mindful
living”.
!
Life Changing Conversations by Sarah
Rozenthuler is a well-known expert in
dialogue. Authentic dialogue can only
take place once leaders have fully
understood the dynamics of seeing and
how their representations of the world,
their organisations and nature may differ
radically from those in their social and
business ecosystems.

10. The Ecosystem
Holonomics gives us a very profound
way to understand experience, where
you go upstream into the act of seeing
itself. Very few people, including
designers, have this way of seeing.
!
In order to understand the customer
experience, and indeed the very soul of
an organisation, you have to understand
two things.
!
The first is to understand business
processes and how organisations need
to have a systemic view of the
organisation and the flow of work across
o r g a n i s a t i o n a l s i l o s ( t e a m s ,
departments, units etc).
!
John Seddon is an English systems
thinker who writes about the need to
break away from command and control
hierarchies, especially in relation to call
centres, service design, systemic
measures and the role of quantitative
targets etc.
Simon has a background in customer
experience design and created the
concept of customer experiences with
soul, which comes from the philosophy
of wholeness in Holonomics.
!
Matt Watkinson’s The Ten Principles
Behind Great Customer Experiences is
an excellent introduction to the
concept of customer experience.
!
Holonomics provides a powerful new
w a y t o u n d e r s t a n d c u s t o m e r
experience at a strategic level,
including the full input from HR who
h a v e a r o l e i n t r a i n i n g a n d
development of people who can fully
express the soul of the company in
every interaction they have.

11. The Ecosystem
Henri knew Hans-Georg Gadamer,
and in Taking Appearances
Seriously he extended his work on
the dynamics of wholeness and
Goethe into hermeneutics and
phenomenology - understanding
meaning in texts and speech.
!
It is often the case that leaders do
n o t u n d e r s t a n d t h e l i v e d
experiences of their employees
and therefore fail to communicate
strategy and other things as there
is no joint understanding of
meaning.
A customer experience can only truly be
understood by understanding the dynamics
of wholeness - the relation between the
parts and the whole and how the whole
comes to presence in the parts.
!
Products and services all have ‘being’ and
Holonomics provides a way for executives
to develop the dynamics way of seeing
allowing them to really understand the
whole organisation, business where people
and planet matter.

12. Bohm, David and Peat, F. David (2011) Science, Order and Creativity
!
Bortoft, Henri, (1996) The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of
Science
!
Bortoft, Henri (2012) Taking Appearance Seriously: The Dynamic Way
of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought
!
Campbell, Joseph, and Moyers, Bill (1991) The Power of Myth
!
Capra, Fritjof and Luiso, Pier Luigi (2014) The Systems View of Life: A
Unifying Vision
!
de Geus, Arie (1999) The Living Company: Growth, Learning and
Longevity in Business
!
Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1980) Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight
Hermeneutical Studies on Plato
!
Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1989) Truth and Method
!
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1840) Theory of Colours
!
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (2009) The Metamorphosis of Plants
!
Hutchins, Giles (2012) The Nature of Business: Redesigning for
Resilience
!
Hutchins, Giles (2014) The Illusion of Separation: Exploring the Cause
of our Current Crisis
!
Johnson, H. Thomas and Bröms, Anders (2000) Profit Beyond
Measure: Extraordinary Results through Attention to Work and People
!
Kidd, Emma (2015) First Steps to Seeing: A Path Towards Living
Attentively
McGilchrist, Iain (2010) The Master and His Emissary: The Divided
Brain and the Making of the Modern World
!
Koestler, Arthur (2014) The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing
Vision of the Universe
!
Kumar, Satish (2013) Soil, Soul, Society: A New Trinity for our Time
!
Lambert, David, Chetland, Chris and Millar, Craig (2013) The Intuitive
Way of Knowing: A Tribute to Brian Goodwin
!
Margulis, Lynn and Sagan, Dorion (1995) What is Life?
!
Prigogine, Ilya and Stengers, Isabelle (1984) Order Out of Chaos:
Man’s New Dialogue with Nature
!
Robinson, Simon and Robinson, Maria Moraes (2014) Holonomics:
Business Where People and Planet Matter
!
Scharmer, C. Otto (2009) Theory U: Leading from the Future as It
Emerges
!
Seamon, David and Zajonc, Arthur (1998) Goethe’s Way of Science: A
Phenomenology of Nature
!
Seddon, John (2003) Freedom From Command and Control
!
!
Steiner, Rudolf (2000) Nature’s Open Secret: Introductions to Goethe’s
Scientific Writings
!
Wachterhauser, Bruce (1999) Beyond Being: Gadamer’s Post-Platonic
Hermeneutical Ontology
!
Watkinson, Matt (2013) The Ten principles Behind Great Customer
Experiences
The Books

13. Simon Robinson
!
Simon Robinson is the founder of Holonomics Education, a consultancy
which helps organisations to think and innovate differently, allowing the
development of high value customer experiences, the development of
powerful and effective strategies, and of meaningful and sustainable brands.
!
Simon is an international keynote speaker at innumerable conferences
including Sustainable Brands, London and San Diego and TEDx
Florianópolis. He was one of the co-founders of the world’s first mobile
internet portal, Genie Internet, which received many media awards for
innovation, and has been a developer of cutting-edge innovations in
technology and new media at BT, O2 and Digital Bridges. He is the editor of
the blog www.transitionconsciousness.org and is a Harvard Business Review
Brasil author.
!
!
Maria Moraes Robinson
!
Maria Moraes Robinson is an internationally recognised expert and keynote
speaker in strategy, change management, sustainability, human values and
the Balanced Scorecard methodology. Recent conferences she has
presented and run workshops at include Sustainable Brands, San Diego and
London, and Harvard Business Review Brasil summits on both Corporate
Education and Leadership, and she is a published author in Harvard
Business Review Brasil.
!
As a business consultant Maria has helped to introduce Kaplan and Norton’s
Balanced Scorecard methodology into Brazil across many sectors including
telecoms, technology, petrochemicals, steel, energy, transportation and
education. Her current work is focused on developing innovative new
business courses which integrate insights from the Indian programme
Human Values in Education and complexity science, with business strategy,
change management, sustainability and organisational redesign.
Contact Information!
!
www.holonomics.co.uk (English)
www.holonomics.com.br (Portuguese)
www.holonomics.org (book)
www.transitionconsiousness.org (blog)
@srerobinson (Twitter)
@DoraMoraesR (Twitter)