Our History · 1986 to Today
The best decision-makers couldn't explain how they decided. One professor took that seriously.
Where the idea came from, the people who built it, the television series that carried it nationwide, and the writing that still frames our work.
The question that started it
What if the most important data you'll ever access is already inside you?
Most organizations chase better analytics, faster models, sharper algorithms. Meanwhile, the faculty that connects pattern recognition to judgment — the one that top decision-makers quietly rely on — goes unnamed and untrained.
Your expertise and hard-won wisdom may be the shadow that illuminates. Paired with our revelation process for surfacing latent market gaps — the ones only your perspective can name — what emerges is rarely what you set out to find. Breakthroughs tend to arrive from angles you didn't know existed.
“Intuition Network” · Watch on YouTube (youtube.com/watch?v=w5Ezyu9-xVM)
Picture a surgeon pausing before an incision — not from doubt, but from a quiet signal that something isn't right. A portfolio manager who feels the weight of a decision before the numbers confirm it. A teacher who senses when a student's silence means something different today.
These aren't anomalies. They're the operating edge of human intelligence. The Intuition Network exists to ensure that edge isn't left to chance.
Timeline
Four decades, one inquiry.
- 1986
A coalition of small groups
Weston H. Agor, Professor of Public Administration at the University of Texas at El Paso, founds the Intuition Network to share knowledge and experience. The Charlson Research Foundation of Minneapolis funds it. A newsletter and conferences follow.
- 1988
Thinking Allowed goes on air
Jeffrey Mishlove's weekly interview series begins reaching PBS stations by satellite. The Network underwrites its intuition-related programs. Read the transcripts →
- 1993
7,500 members worldwide
Agor names psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove as Director. That summer, Mishlove arranges a merger with the Institute of Noetic Sciences of Sausalito, California.
- 1996
Independent again
In February, the Intuition Network becomes an independent nonprofit organization. The 1998 account →
- 2003
A manifesto
The board resolves to start a social movement for the liberation of human psychic potential. Read the Manifesto for Psychic Liberation →
- Today
From inquiry to initiatives
The Network sponsors Kids Teaching Kids and the California Invention Center, alongside two allied initiatives of Edison Innovations: Executive Entrepreneurship and Govipedia. See the initiatives →
The people
Who built it, and who carries it forward.
Weston H. Agor, Ph.D.
A professor of public administration who studied intuitive decision-making in executives. When he found that the people making the best calls couldn't fully explain how, he didn't dismiss the finding. He built a network around it.
Jeffrey Mishlove, Ph.D.
Licensed clinical psychologist and holder of the only doctoral diploma in parapsychology ever awarded by an accredited American university (UC Berkeley, 1980). Host of Thinking Allowed; author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems and Thinking Allowed.
Biography →Larry MacDonald
Co-founder and chairman of Edison Innovations. Leads the Network's current chapter: putting what people already know to work through initiatives for children, inventors, experienced professionals, and citizens.
The founding framework
Three pillars, six areas of focus.
The framework the Network developed before its current initiatives. Every initiative traces back to at least one of these.
Research & Inquiry
Supporting rigorous investigation into consciousness, intuitive cognition, and the mechanisms beneath what we call “knowing without knowing how.”
Education & Practice
Developing programs that move intuition from a vague concept into a trainable, applicable skill — in boardrooms, classrooms, and clinical settings.
Community & Connection
Building networks where intellectual honesty meets genuine curiosity. Where a neuroscientist and an artist can discover they're working on the same problem.
Consciousness Research
Supporting the scientists, scholars, and practitioners exploring the frontiers of human awareness — from parapsychology to contemplative neuroscience.
Intuitive Intelligence in Practice
How do leaders, clinicians, and creatives train the faculty that operates beneath conscious analysis? We're finding out — and building programs around what works.
Media & Public Discourse
Continuing the legacy of Thinking Allowed — creating platforms where serious inquiry into consciousness reaches the people who need it most.
Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue
The next breakthrough in understanding intuition won't come from a single field. It will come from the edges where psychology, physics, philosophy, and lived experience collide.
Education & Curriculum
Developing frameworks that bring intuition into academic and professional settings — not as a replacement for analysis, but as its essential complement.
Community Cultivation
Building the kind of network Agor envisioned — where people share knowledge and experience openly, without the barrier of having to prove they belong.
In one sentence
Since 1986, the Intuition Network has asked what people know but can't yet explain — and today it puts that knowledge to work.
Have a memory of the Network, a Thinking Allowed episode that mattered to you, or material for the archive? We'd like to hear it.
Write: friend@intuitionnetwork.org · Larry MacDonald, President