Bio

For my academic CV, click here.  Follow me on Twitter @jritchiedunham or LinkedIn.

Short Bio

Jim is president of the Institute for Strategic Clarity, affiliated with Boston College, Harvard, ITESM EGADE Business School, and Univ Politecnica de Madrid, co-author of Ecosynomics (2014), Managing from Clarity (2001), and many chapters and articles. He blogs regularly at jlrd.me. He has a BS in Petroleum Engineering (UTulsa), an MIM (Thunderbird), an MBA (ESADE), and a PhD in Decision Sciences (UTAustin).

Synopsis of My Work

The book Ecosynomics: The Science of Abundance shows (1) that you prefer abundance-based agreements to scarcity-based ones, (2) lots of people have figured out how to live this way, for decades, with far better results and experiences, and (3) you can choose to shift your agreements, experiences, and outcomes to abundance-based. [Get the book at https://isclarity.org/collections.]

Slightly Longer Bio

It is possible to serve all the stakeholders your system is designed to serve and to fully engage all of the creative energy available in your system.  It is possible, relatively straightforward to do, and leads to massive, net-positive gains for everyone. I can show you how to do this.  Not doing this leads to net-negative, disengaging, entropy-enhancing losses for everyone.  It is time to say Yes! to the creation of net-positive systems.

The strategic systems-change frameworks and implementation processes I developed have guided 1,000s of groups in 100s of initiatives in 49 countries, in banking, building renovation, development, education, energy, health, manufacturing, and the SDGs. I have co-led this work with a global network of organizational and community leaders, process experts, and scholars. This work is funded by the groups themselves, foundations, and public grants.

My scholarly research on abundance-based systems of agreements fields (ecosynomic pactoecography) is informed by field tests in 49 countries and survey data from >132,000 responses in 126 countries. My scholarly network includes formal affiliations at Boston College, Harvard, UPMadrid, and a global network. We are looking for new affiliates to address emerging questions of deep collaboration, sacred hospitality, and abundance-based values operating systems and valuations.

I have described this work in the books Agreements (2023), Managing from Clarity: Identifying, Aligning and Leveraging Strategic Resources (2001) and Ecosynomics: The Science of Abundance (2014), chapters, practical and scholarly articles, videos, audios, online courses, and an online knowledgebase. I have taught this material in courses and lectures at leading universities in 27 countries over the past 30 years.

My studies include a BS in Petroleum Engineering (UTulsa), an MIM (Thunderbird), an MBA (ESADE), a PhD in Decision Sciences (UTAustin), a postdoc in system dynamics and organizational studies (MIT), and a postdoc in psychology and Langer mindfulness (Harvard).

You can dive into working with your agreements at the Institute for Strategic Clarity (isclarity.org), my blog (jlrd.me), or contact me directly.

What I envision

Looking out to 2040, I see a completely different set of agreements can exist among all peoples, agreements in which people can strive towards their own deeper potential.  I believe that we will look back to 2023 as a time when the efforts of a few began to support the emergence of this new set of agreements, in critical, high-leverage ways, and that our work played a key role in that emergence. It will have been through the “naming” of the foundations of the new agreements, what we now call ecosynomics, that people began to identify and connect with each other in support of these new agreements.