Peter Koenig’s love of money started early. Aged just six his mother put him out in the lanes of rural Sussex in England selling cabbages and strawberries door-to-door.A conventional career in commerce followed, and in 1973 he was recruited to Switzerland to help manage the European commercial real estate portfolio of Litton Industries, then one of the world’s largest multinationals. In 1981 after an MBA course in Geneva he had a spiritual epiphany that led him to start investigating how money affects human potential and striving, and how love – in all its aspects – might be integrated into the practice of business. He defines business as “any activity where money in any currency flows in exchange for goods and services”.The creation of the International Business Network in Switzerland, and 7 years of empirical ‘Action Research’ (cf. Kurt Lewin) with small groups brought him to develop a simple system capable of accurately diagnosing the particularity of any individual’s relation to money. A further 3 years of experimentation in change processes brought him to invent a new and systematic approach which helps people dissolve and unlearn rigid patterns of behavior. This method has since the 1990’s been refined and successfully applied in relation to money and finance, but also to multiple other life aspects, especially those through which money interweaves. Of application to both individual and collective situations his business card reads “Seminal Thinking, Behavioural Finance, Organisational Architect”.In 2003 Peter Koenig published some of his findings as “30 Lies about Money”, translated into German, French and Hungarian. (The German version is Conzett Verlag’s “30 dreiste Lügen über Geld”). In 2009 his further research led to new discoveries, which he fine-tuned as a set of principles describing how founders – “Sources”- realize their initiatives and projects. Both his “moneywork” and “sourcework” resulted in books on these subjects, along with seminars, presentations and a series of conferences, spreading information that now circulates in many countries through a growing community of trained practitioners and an online platform, https://community.createlovein.business .The original approach Peter Koenig developed helps people increasingly align their work, their relationships and their income to accord with what they love doing in life. This is a radical departure from the success formula of earlier industrial generations that is still dominant. This may be seen as consisting of two parts. In the first part human work is treated as inevitably mechanical and unhealthy – drudgery which must be compensated in money. In the second the money earnt from selling one’s time and labour enables the acquisition of products and services one desires or needs. The moral incentive originally invented to accept this system and coerce people into the early factories of the industrial revolution was expressed in a motto still currently in use: “to earn and secure one’s living”. Peter Koenig’s approach points out that this system was indeed an ingenious and successful response to the temporal needs of the industrial era. Yet as an enduring solution falls short since it is artificial, not ultimately in harmony with human nature or Nature in general. No other species tries to earn its existence or to ensure its immortality this way. Nonetheless, the slogan and the system it engenders have over the centuries become so embodied as to have turned into an almost unquestioned cultural norm.He suggests that in order to respond with any effectiveness to the large social, economic, political and ecological questions presenting themselves in the 21st century a radical reversal is now needed. He wants us to see that the way modern technology is systematically pushing old mechanical and unpleasant jobs into obsolescence, coupled with the cascading advances in neurology, psychology and finance, a global opportunity is presenting itself to reframe one’s work in life and the way money flows into something healthy and pleasant as well as radically contributing to the good of all. The tools he has developed are designed to help accelerate this. For what this evolution represents in a larger sense Peter Koenig has coined a new word: “Transforlution” **, a term that also represents his life work. He lives and works in Zürich, Switzerland.
