Robb Smith

Robb Smith

Robb is a social innovator who coined the term the Transformation Age and is a leader in integral philosophy and the global integrative metatheory movement. As founder and CEO of Integral Life, he advises entrepreneurs, executives and thought leaders on leading-edge innovation and applications of integral philosophy.

He founded the Institute of Applied Metatheory in 2022 to help integrative movements experiment with applied social action. In 2023 IAM spun out Context, the world's first Augmented Leadership platform, which merges AI with mental model visualization to help leaders think integrally naturally and easily.

He was founder of Chrysallis, which was the world's most comprehensive personal and professional development app, nominated for the 2015 Goldman Sachs Healthcare Startup of the Year and in 2016 for the IONS award for Transformational Technology. In 2016 Chrysallis was acquired by ADURO.

Prior to that, he was a co-founder and partner in Nevada Ventures, the state's first venture capital fund, where he dedicated himself to building Nevada's innovation economy. He is a former director of Alere, a three-time Inc. 500 awardee, which became the largest population health management company in the United States (NYSE: ALR).

He was named Nevada's Young Entrepreneur of the Year and is former president of Entrepreneur's Organization Reno-Tahoe. He started the Nevada Ventures Nanoscience Program at the University of Nevada and spun-out Nevada Nano, whose detection of explosive, chemical and biological substances was chosen by Scientific American as the best defense-related technology of 2004.

He is a graduate of University of Nevada (undergraduate in finance, graduate work in philosophy), the Venture Capital Institute and held the Certified Management Accountant and Certified in Financial Management designations. He is a fellow of Desert Research Institute, a former fellow of Aspen Institute and former trustee of Nevada Museum of Art. He was named to Nevada Top 20 under 40 lists in 3 different decades and in 2012 he was nominated for the TED Prize.

The Metacrisis is Giving Rise to the Transformation Age

The Metacrisis is Giving Rise to the Transformation Age

How can we contribute to the rise of the Transformation Age? We first need to understand what’s driving the emergence of the Transformation Age out of the Information Age: a global metacrisis, occurring amidst a great release of global power, which as it becomes more acute is exposing the limitations of the current era’s structures, sensemaking, key contradictions (all pluribus, little unum), scarce resources (meaning), and the sources of power themselves (convening power).
The Transformation Age: America Burning

The Transformation Age: America Burning

America has been on fire these past few weeks. A nation struggling with its racist past, its contemporary racial shadow, its deep political and cultural polarization, and a divisive president who will never be capable of leading a nation, we continue to find ourselves in the heart of The Great Release (and this time, not from an economic depression or disease pandemic, but from our deep and terrible racist heritage). In this brief article, I want to use a few lenses of integral metatheory—concepts you’ll be familiar with, but applied in ways you’ve never seen before—to see if we can...
Conversations From the Road

Conversations From the Road

In my travels, I’ve been privileged to sit down with members of the Integral Life community and talk with them about their lives, their growth and what’s on their minds. You are invited to listen in to those conversations we have received permission to publish.
Deeper Into the Great Release

Deeper Into the Great Release

Ladies and gentlemen, the Great Release is truly and fully underway. That earthquake has now begun. Nanoscopically small and quietly transmissible, Covid-19 would be almost laughable as a catalyst for the great release if it weren’t so deadly. But as it stands, it is in fact the perfect spark to alight the ample tinder of total system irresilience.
Integral Preparation for a Time of Rapid Social Change

Integral Preparation for a Time of Rapid Social Change

A lifetime of practice has prepared integral people to carry the world through the trying and rapidly-changing times we are entering.
Corona, Climate, and Crashes: Welcome to the Transformation Age

Corona, Climate, and Crashes: Welcome to the Transformation Age

Robb Smith and Corey deVos explore the rising disruption caused by a brand new set of global life conditions emerging across the planet, why only an integral sensibility is capable of managing these many challenges and crises, and how we can begin to cultivate the inner resilience and anti-fragility we need in order to endure and even thrive in the midst of extreme volatility.
Integral Ventures World Tour: Free Coaching, Now Coming to You

Integral Ventures World Tour: Free Coaching, Now Coming to You

Over the coming year I will be traveling throughout the world in order to offer pro bono in-person coaching, support and counsel on any topic for which Integral Lifers might want a sounding board. Click to learn more.
Can the Intellectual Dark Web Save Western Culture?

Can the Intellectual Dark Web Save Western Culture?

"The question is, will the IDW be more than a counter-balancing force to the dominant intellectual ideology of Green postmodernism? Can they synthesize enough, in time, to articulate positive, coherent and integrative modes upon which culture might be reorganized as it enters the fourth phase in a few short years?"
The Intellectual Dark Web: An Integral View

The Intellectual Dark Web: An Integral View

Mark Forman and Robb Smith discuss the Intellectual Dark Web, the loose counter-cultural band of intellectuals recently profiled in the New York Times.
Announcing Integral Ventures, an Integral Innovation Ecosystem

Announcing Integral Ventures, an Integral Innovation Ecosystem

At What NOW this year I quietly mentioned that Integral Life was spearheading a new integral-based economic innovation ecosystem, and I was delighted at the overwhelming response and support for such an idea. Well, I am very pleased to say that Integral Ventures is live and now open to support Integral Life members.
Big Data in Little China

Big Data in Little China

Are there fundamentally different ways for countries to progress into and through modernity? After all, the western model has been dominant for 200 years because of its success in doing so. But might Big Data — as controlled either by strong central states, private monopolistic businesses, or both — allow new forms of social regulation that can drive the evolution of non-western societies into modern values and beyond?
Why Power Matters: A Conversation with Robb Smith

Why Power Matters: A Conversation with Robb Smith

Robb Smith talks with David Riordan about the many faces of power, and why it's so difficult for each of us to get a personal handle on it.
Kosmic Integrity: The Integral Community’s Most Important Contribution to the World

Kosmic Integrity: The Integral Community’s Most Important Contribution to the World

Join Robb as he calls us forward to be agents of kosmic integrity, an incredibly unique praxis of healing and wholeness that may be one of our most important contributions to the world in the road ahead.
Integral Power Panel

Integral Power Panel

Join panelists Ginny Whitelaw, Roger Walsh, Jeff Salzman, Gail Hochachka, and Bert Parlee in this far-ranging discussion about power — how to relate to it, how to wield it, and how to avoid getting trampled by it.
A New War for Power

A New War for Power

Black Lives Matter. MeToo. North Korea. Robert Mueller. Fake news. What do these and dozens of other headlines have in common? Join Robb as he explains how they all point to a new war for power that is currently underway: how power is being used and misused, how power is changing, and who will have power when the momentous leap into the transformation age is done.
Never Been Better, Never Felt Worse: Inside the Rise of an Integral Global Operating System for the 21st Century

Never Been Better, Never Felt Worse: Inside the Rise of an Integral Global Operating System for the 21st Century

Integral Life CEO Robb Smith puts the tumult of 2016 into historical perspective and looks ahead at the “momentous leap into the transformation age” that he believes is underway right now. Taking a long view of history, evolutionary dynamics, culture and economics, Robb argues that we’re at the peak of a Green, pluralistic global operating system, with Orange modernism slipping into our rearview mirror, and Teal integralism just beginning to emerge, holding all the promise of overcoming the evolutionary contradictions that gave rise to populism and leaders like Donald Trump.
Mueller, Trump & Collusion: The Rule of Law Pushes Back

Mueller, Trump & Collusion: The Rule of Law Pushes Back

In today’s Daily Evolver Jeff, Corey and Robb look at today’s groundbreaking headlines to explain how Red and Amber-centered populism, led by President Trump, gained power in order to combat the stagnation brought on by too much cultural and economic power consolidated in too few hands. Today, with indictments being leveled at three people working for the Trump campaign (one of which confirmed collusion with the Russian government), the Orange, Constitutionally-centered rule of law fought back.
Inside the Great Release

Inside the Great Release

Join Integral Life co-founder Robb Smith as he explains the current historical moment as a natural and predictable backlash against the twin dominance of the right-leaning Multinational Capital Holon in economics and the left-leaning Multicultural Culture Holon in culture since the 1970s.
Loving AIs: Bringing Unconditional Love to Artificial General Intelligence

Loving AIs: Bringing Unconditional Love to Artificial General Intelligence

As part of our work on the Innovation Lab advisory board of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, I had the pleasure of sitting down with OpenCog founder and leading AGI researcher Ben Goertzel and IONS Innovation Lab director Julia Mossbridge to discuss LOVING AIs, a project aiming to design and develop an “unconditional loving” module for AGIs. In this interview, I dive into the rabbit hole of AGI with Ben and Julia to discuss the state of the field, what it would mean to program unconditional love into AGIs, and some thorny implications for the brave new world we’re entering.
The Great Release

The Great Release

Rising populism and the election of President Trump are symptoms of massive irresilience that has been building in the U.S.-led world state since 1945, and may reflect the end of the fourth cycle of economic hegemony of the past 800 years. The Great Recession of 2008 was just a tremor. We wind toward a coming global breakdown, a great release that threatens regression across our lives.
Shapes of Mind: The 10 Stages of Consciousness

Shapes of Mind: The 10 Stages of Consciousness

At Integral Life we sometimes refer to different stages of consciousness in order to make sense of various issues or complex situations. So I thought it might be useful to briefly outline the ten stages of consciousness-or what I often call the ten shapes of mind–in order to provide an orienting primer for those who are new to Integral Life. For those who have been with us a long time, hopefully you'll enjoy a refresher.
The Rise of the Benefit Corporation: Bringing More Sanity, Sustainability, and Success to Big Business

The Rise of the Benefit Corporation: Bringing More Sanity, Sustainability, and Success to Big Business

In a world where corporations often act like psychopaths and seem steered by barely more than greed and avarice, is it possible to transcend their sociopathic pursuit of profit and bring more care and consciousness to our economic system? Listen as corporate lawyer and conscious business leader John Montgomery explains how we arrived at the corporate oligarchy in which we now find ourselves, and how we might be able to steer ourselves toward a more sane and sustainable future.
Michelin 3-Star: The Culinary Art of Joel Robuchon

Michelin 3-Star: The Culinary Art of Joel Robuchon

Can food be transformative? In this first-of-its-kind integral review of Michelin 3-star restaurant Joel Robuchon, Robb Smith explores why the world’s best dining has always been at the center of his aesthetic Integral Life Practice, and what integrative metatheory brings to a night at one of the world’s best restaurants.
Capitalism: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

Capitalism: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

In this Integral Life exclusive, renown media theorist and author Douglas Rushkoff argues that the central assumption of our economic lives — that further economic growth will create continually rising prosperity for all — is broken.
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