History & Foundation

CIL was founded in 1989 by Louis van der Merwe (CIL) together with Dr. Peter Senge of MIT and Peter Schwartz of GBN.

Based on Louis' involvement with work on Learning Organisations led by Dr. Peter Senge at MIT - Boston, they decided that there was a need and an opportunity to develop an organisation that provided an approach to consulting based on the Learning Organisation methods and principles being developed. As Arie de Geus has said a clear competitive advantage is learning faster than your competition (Harvard Business Review Sept. 1988).

CIL contributed in these foundational days to research and development in this field including contributions to the best selling management books; The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook - Dr. Senge et al (link), The Dance of Change - Dr. Senge et al (link) and Riding the Waves of Culture - Fons Trompenaars (link).

An office was opened in Johannesburg South Africa, Louis' home city, where he was anxious to support organisations in addressing change management challenges as well as develop capacity and learning within the local market.

Today CIL partners, principals and associates currently work world-wide through our CIL bases in Europe and Southern Africa with many Fortune 500 companies, and NGO's in the areas of scenario-based strategy, systems thinking, leadership development and organisation renewal and effectiveness.

Today we pride ourselves not only on the quality of our consulting, facilitation and capacity building offerings but also the contribution we make to research and theory building in the field of scenario-based strategy within the broad field of management sciences. We help to bring science to the management sciences. (Learn more).