While headlines swirl with AI breakthroughs and economic disruption, a deeper shift is unfolding, one that touches not just how we work, but how we relate, lead, and make meaning. This is a shift not just in tools, but in the operating system of society itself.
For the past half-century, the knowledge economy reigned supreme. It shaped a $80 trillion global knowledge economy and employs over 1 billion people. Cognitive labor, analysis, research, writing, planning, coding, was the foundation of value creation. But that foundation is now cracking.
In 2025 alone (so far), over 94,000 knowledge workers were laid off from Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft, each citing AI-driven efficiencies. But this isn’t just a workforce shift. It’s a civilizational turning point. A redefinition of what society considers valuable.
We are entering the largest reskilling moment in human history. The Industrial Revolution reskilled 100 million workers. This one affects over 1 billion. And unlike past transitions, this time it’s not just about new skills, it’s about cultivating human depth. What’s needed now are the inner capacities machines cannot replicate: discernment, relational intelligence, attunement, and vocational clarity.
In short, wisdom.
The Wisdom Turn
If you’ve spent time at MEA, you’ve likely touched this insight already: the logic and value system that got us here does not suffice for what comes next. Many of us built careers by mastering the knowledge economy, strategizing, optimizing, scaling. But at this stage of life, a deeper truth comes into focus: success isn’t the same as meaning. Efficiency isn’t the same as wisdom. This reckoning is now happening at a societal scale.
This isn’t about rejecting technology, it’s about rebalancing. As exponential tools accelerate, the real bottleneck isn’t access to data, it’s access to inner clarity. AI now handles “thinking” tasks better than most humans. What remains is how we show up: our discernment, presence, and relational depth. The most valuable human capability in this new era won’t be propositional knowledge. It will be the ability to hold complexity, attune emotionally, build trust, and act from discernment.
Because what’s unraveling isn’t just the labor market. It’s our very understanding of value.
The Economic Case for Wisdom
History shows that investing in human development pays. In 19th-century Scandinavia, Folk High Schools cultivated not just skills, but civic trust and cultural depth. The result? Denmark went from one of the poorest countries in Europe in 1850 to one of the richest by the 1920s.
During the Renaissance, the Medici family didn’t just fund art, they bankrolled a cultural and developmental transformation. Their investments turned Florence into the intellectual capital of Europe, yielding centuries of influence and wealth. And in turn made the Medicis a lot of money. Those who invest in cultural and human development during transitional eras don’t just adapt, they shape markets and civilizations. Now, as AI floods the zone with information, the bottleneck is discernment. That’s the entry point of the Wisdom Economy.
But here’s the catch: the core capacities it requires – insight, presence, relational depth – aren’t cultivated through content consumption alone. They emerge through real-time feedback, tension, connection, and reflection. Wisdom needs context. And context needs place. This is why physical spaces matter. Wisdom doesn’t arise in a vacuum, it requires intentional environments, communities of practice, and rhythms that support deep, identity-level development. When societies build for that kind of human development – systemic, relational, embodied – they don’t just produce more capable individuals. They generate entire ecosystems of value.
What Developmental Institutions Enable
This is not theoretical. We’ve seen what happens when developmental ecosystems emerge:
- Universities didn’t just issue degrees, they built identities, human capital value chains, uplifted surrounding real estate, created talent pipelines, and formed powerful ecosystems.
- Y Combinator didn’t just fund startups, it built a founder culture and an early-stage filter that drove trillions in enterprise value, changed how we do business.
- Bell Labs didn’t just do research, it created a long-term innovation environment that produced technologies like the transistor, information theory, and the foundations of the internet, shaping entire industries for decades.
Think about this in the context of MEA, they don’t just run retreats, they have cultivated trusted networks, vocational clarity for thousands and relational capital that fuels aligned entrepreneurship and purpose-driven leadership.
These institutions are more than places of human development.
They’re platforms for transformed humans in right relationships.
And that’s what creates durable value.
Toward 1000 Wisdom Schools
Now imagine a global network of Wisdom Schools, places that combine inner development, vocational reorientation, and regenerative living. Around these hubs, economic activity emerges, Real estate uplift near campuses, Talent pipelines, Powerful ecosystems, New innovations and companies emerge. New ways of being and relating.
We are in the early stages of this new class of institutions coming alive. They carry echoes of what once was, but look ahead to what is now emerging. Yet there’s a clear need for shared language, frameworks, and heuristics to understand what these places are, who they serve, and how they function. Think of this as the TCP/IP moment of the internet, or the Layer 1 moment of blockchain, but this time, not for bits and code, but for the human operating system.
I’m part of a group that’s already investing in this space and have seen firsthand the need for clarity around this emerging opportunity. To help mobilize more capital and collaboration, we’re launching a field-mapping initiative to chart the landscape of Wisdom Schools. In Phase 1, we’ll publish a public report, create an open-source digital repository, and release an investable thesis. This initial effort will map:
- Models and taxonomies
- Viable business approaches
- Demand drivers and growth edges
- Capital pathways
- Enabling conditions for scale
Why Now?
Because we can no longer separate personal transformation from societal systems.
- The AI founder, brilliant but operating from fear and trauma, tinkering with powers that could reshape, or erase, human life.
- The seasoned executive, surrounded by resources, yet unable to slow down long enough to feel, reflect, or lead from integrity.
- The policymaker, trapped in a reactive system, sensing the need for deeper change but lacking the inner grounding to navigate complexity without collapse.
What we need now isn’t just smarter systems. It’s deeper humans.
An Invitation
This is already happening. A global movement is underway to build the institutions, spaces, and ecosystems that will define the Wisdom Economy. The people shaping it are already finding each other. If you’re one of them, investor, donor, builder, steward, now’s the time to plug in [email protected]
-Nicolas
Nicolas Michaelsen is the founder of Basin Collective, a group building and investing in the Wisdom Economy. A successful startup founder and investor, he has built companies that scaled to over 700 people across 28 countries and been a central actor in catalyzing the systemic investing movement. Aside from his work in entrepreneurship and capital innovation, he is also a writer and thinker exploring the intersection of inner development and societal transformation. He writes about the wisdom economy and more at Ecologies of Wisdom.