Mountain Quest Institute

The Mountain Quest Institute (MQI) is a research, retreat and conference center^[1] (both business and academic) on 450 acres (1.8 km²) in Pocahontas County, West Virginia (in Frost, near Marlinton) in the Allegheny Mountains of the United States. MQI claims three "quests": the Quest for Knowledge, the Quest for Meaning, and the Quest for Consciousness.^[2] MQI promotes itself as scientific, humanistic and spiritual and claims to find no contradiction in this combination.

The Institute's inn,^[3] built at an angle to preserve some ancient trees, is connected to the original 1905 farmhouse by covered porches. Each room has an individual theme, such as the 'Nautical Room' (which features model ships and a water bed). The complex includes: a meeting room, break-out rooms, a computer room, a game room, a sauna and jacuzzi, a tower, and a two-story library. There are hiking trails and morning visits with the horses (six of which have been born on the farm) and llamas. A labyrinth for walking meditation is a more recent addition.

The Institute's founders are Alex and David Bennet (who has degrees in neuroscience and atomic physics), organizational development and knowledge management professionals^[4]^[5] who are also the co-authors of Organizational Survival in the New World: The Intelligent Complex Adaptive System.^[6] and Knowledge Mobilization in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Moving from Research to Action.^[7] Topics of recent articles downloadable from the MQI Institute web site include: Hierarchy as a learning platform, The controversy of consciousness, Learning as associative patterning, CONTEXT: the shared knowledge enigma, Expanding the knowledge paradigm, and The knowledge and knowing of spiritual learning. More recent areas of research include: The decision-making process for complex situations in a complex environment; Associative patterning: The unconscious life of an organization; Moving from knowledge to wisdom, from ordinary consciousness to extraordinary consicusness; and Engaging tacit knowledge in support of organizational learning.

References[]

^ Pamela Pritt (October 2003). "The mind's what matters at Mountain Quest Institute". Pocahontas Times, Vol. 2 No. 10 (includes photographs). Archived from the original on October 8, 2007. The purpose of MQI is two-fold: to provide expertise in organizational achievement and systems thinking and do it in an environment conducive to relaxation and introspection … MQI accomplishes that by providing 12,000 books in its extensive library, a haven for research, reading and personal time.
^ See www.mountainquestinstitute.com
^ The Inn at Mountain Quest. Archived June 8, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
^ PricewaterhouseCoopers Center for Innovation in Professional Services (11 October 2002). "Alex Bennet, Co-Founder, Mountain Quest Institute". McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia. Archived from the original on September 1, 2006.
^ United States Department of Labor. "David H. Bennet". Archived from the original on June 9, 2007.
^ NASA Headquarters Library (September 2006). Program/Project Management Resource List #11. Organizational Survival in the New World: The Intelligent Complex Adaptive System (A New Theory of the Firm) Amsterdam & Boston: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003. Archived from the original on 1996-12-19. Hardcover: ISBN 0-7506-7712-0, ISBN 978-0-7506-7712-7 (Book Review at Enterprise Ecology) (Table of Contents at Google Book Search) (See also: Complex system)
^ Alex Bennet and David Bennet with Katherine Fafard, Marc Fonda, Ted Lomond, Laurent Messier and Nicole Vaugeois in cooperation with The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), MQI Press (2007). See www.mqipress.com