What This Substack Is For
Welcome to Kosmon-Lab.
This Substack is a public research lab for exploring organizations, governance, history, and civilization through a structural lens.
For more than twenty years, I worked in systems engineering across computer systems, factory systems, and logistics systems, covering everything from requirements definition and development to on-site adjustment and maintenance. Through that experience, I became increasingly concerned with a central question: how do organizations deteriorate, and why do they move toward collapse?
To address that question, I developed Three-Layer Analysis, a framework for organizing knowledge structurally with generative AI. Based on that framework, I then conducted a structural analysis of Zhenguan Zhengyao, a classical text on governance and statecraft. The result was OS Organizational Design Theory.
This theory combines the perspective of an IT architect with insights drawn from classical governance thought, redefining them as a modern framework for understanding organizations. Its central idea is simple: a nation, company, or organization can be understood as an operating system with decision-making functions. Through this framework, I examine why organizations rise, stabilize, stagnate, or collapse.
I am continuing to develop this theory further by studying not only Zhenguan Zhengyao but also works such as Machiavelli’s Discourses and History of Florence, asking whether Eastern and Western traditions of governance can be connected within a shared structural framework.
This publication will focus on three main areas:
1. Theory Notes
Notes on the concepts, variables, and equations of OS Organizational Design Theory.
2. Research Cases
Case-based studies applying the theory to history, institutions, and organizations.
3. Historical Governance
Readings of classical sources such as Zhenguan Zhengyao, Machiavelli, and other traditions of political and organizational thought.
This is not a newsletter built around trends or hot takes.
It is a place to develop and publish a long-term body of work.
The goal is simple:
to build a theory that can survive contact with history, institutions, and reality.
On this Substack, I hope to share that research process and open it to discussion.
If these themes interest you, welcome.