RADICALLY GREATER ENTERPRISE VALUE. CREATED FROM THE INSIDE OUT.
SOLVE ALL YOUR ORGANIZATION’S PROBLEMS BY CHANGING THE DEEPER LOGIC THAT CREATES THEM.
Discover how your intrinsic DNA becomes the foundation of a fundamentally different business mindset, logic and architecture, reducing your dependence on consultancies and creating exceptional value for the world through your products and services. For businesses, that value creation translates into ultraperformance in revenue, profit and enterprise value.
BECOME® is a business methodology developed from 25 years of research into how ultraperformers think and work. These are companies that generate radically higher product value, and therefore shareholder value, than the vast majority of other companies. The methodology consists of three layers.
BECOME® Ontology explains why. Building on the research of our co-founder Eric Bartels and the work of other leading scientists, it shows that society is moving from deficiency needs toward being needs: the need to fully actualize one's intrinsic self by creating value for the world. We call this revolutionary transformation Telogeny, a term combining the ancient Greek telos (“goal” or “purpose”) and genesis (“coming into being”) to express the realization of intrinsic purpose. This is why the extrinsic, outside-in logic of the industrial era, focused on satisfying deficiency needs, increasingly fails.
BECOME® Framework shows what. It maps the business logic and architecture of ultraperformers: enterprises that work intrinsically, from the inside out, driven by their DNA to create specific, optimal value for the world.
BECOME® Program changes how an enterprise works. It is the change-management approach through which a leadership coalition implements the Framework in its own enterprise, including the associated intrinsic behavior.
WHAT IS THE BECOME® INSTITUTE?
The BECOME® Institute is a scientific research institute that has translated more than twenty-five years of research into a methodology of exceptional practical value to organizations and the people who lead and work in them. Through the BECOME® Methodology, we make that knowledge available to the world.
Our intrinsic purpose is not to maximize our own revenue, profit or shareholder value. It is to enable every human organization, from commercial enterprises to foundations and NGOs, to fully actualize its intrinsic DNA and create the greatest value it is capable of contributing to the world.
Our industrial conditioning teaches us that the more we concentrate on obtaining value for ourselves, the more we will obtain. This assumption shapes how people work, how enterprises operate and how we organize our economies.
Yet our research into the behavior of leaders and their organizations irrefutably demonstrates that a small but growing minority operates from a fundamentally different mindset. These organizations have a distinct way of perceiving, thinking and working, expressed in an equally distinct business logic and architecture.
This intrinsic way of operating produces exceptional value through their products and services, radically improves the well-being and fulfillment of their people, and contributes to the health of our natural environment and the life it sustains. For businesses, the exceptional value they create also generates financial ultraperformance.
Our industrial conditioning regards this reality as impossible. We have been conditioned to believe that financial returns are fundamentally at odds with doing good for people, the world and the environment. Yet these outcomes emerge naturally from the intrinsic mindset and the coherent way of thinking, working and organizing that follows from it.
The prevailing mindset, still used by approximately 95% of businesses and organizations worldwide, is extrinsically driven. Its primary focus is on obtaining money and maximizing revenue and profit.
The intrinsic mindset, used by approximately 5% of businesses and organizations worldwide, directs attention towards actualizing intrinsic potential and applying natural talents to create optimal value for the world.
The extraordinary finding is that these intrinsically driven businesses generate vastly more revenue, profit and shareholder value for themselves than those whose primary motivation is to obtain precisely those financial results. Their financial ultraperformance follows from the exceptional value they create for the world.
This is the deepest passion and purpose behind everything we do: to fundamentally transform our economies by enabling this shift in how people and organizations think and work, and through that transformation, help our societies move towards a reality we have so far considered impossible.
This purpose also shapes our website. We explain the scientific research, insights and methodology behind BECOME® in depth, making our knowledge accessible to everyone who wants to understand and apply it. Our aim is to give you a substantive understanding of what we have discovered and what it can mean for your organization and the world.
What users say
In their own words.
"Something unexpected happened when we began optimizing our business using the BECOME® Framework through a BECOME® Program. We had expected our customer satisfaction rate and revenue to go up, but we also thought we would have to spend more money to achieve that. Our ratings did go up, but operating expenses actually decreased. And there were more unexpected changes: profit and employee motivation went through the roof, product innovation accelerated and absenteeism went down. We have never seen changes like that!"
Johan Buigholt
Strategy Officer Univé Insurance
"We did a three-year BECOME® Program under the guidance of a renowned BECOME® Practitioner, transforming from a typical industrial potato products manufacturer to a true purpose- and value-driven brand, offering elegantly simple potato enjoyment. An incredible achievement that proves the tremendous power of the BECOME® Framework and Program."
Lorenzo Gardelli
Vice-President Product Studio Lamb Weston
"In the old days we used to hire traditional consultants or other specialists when we had a problem that needed to be fixed. The Become Institute approach works differently. It takes advantage of the knowledge and expertise present in the company and channels that to optimize the business. In this way, you as an enterprise become your own consultancy. It is a unique, systematic and highly effective approach that I truly recommend."
Gaby Vreeken
Marketing Director Bayer Consumer Care
More testimonials
"We used the Become Institute to streamline our business-to-business operations in the Benelux and we loved its approach as it helps you see your organization in a different light. It is as unconventional as it is effective."
Ton van Garderen
General Manager Apple Benelux
"If there are elements within our business that need to be optimized, or where change is desirable, we use the Become Institute. It's that simple!"
Hong Liem
Commercial Director Walt Disney Benelux
"A few years ago I was interviewed by Eric Bartels. I realized that this approach could lift us to a whole new level, not only because it is much faster and more effective than anything we had done before, but also because there is full ownership among employees and you see real improvements in daily operations, including unprecedented sales increases. And that's exactly what it did for us. Truly unique!"
Frits van Eerd
CEO Jumbo Supermarkets
"We did a BECOME® Program to find and activate the purpose of Unilever in the Benelux, connect it to the overall purpose of Unilever Globally and further optimize our operations. We also continue to use the BECOME® Framework to fine-tune and optimize our brands. The very fact that we use the BECOME® Framework canvases for the most important parts of our business says it all. The BECOME® Framework is a refined, yet simple approach that works wonders."
Conny Braams
Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, Unilever Leadership Executive
"We have completed a BECOME® Program for our ice cream brand Hertog, which resulted in a unique experience, even for our experienced marketeers. The intrinsic why of the brand was uncovered. The purpose. We discovered that our brand became removed from its original passion throughout the years. Going on this insight, we found Hertog's permanent and intrinsic why and how that now forms the permanent directive in everything that we do with the brand."
Sebastien Deneux
Senior Brand Development Manager Unilever
"Omo is one of the oldest detergent brands in the world. In our BECOME® Program we went back to the roots of the brand and found its archetypal purpose which led to a much sharper and deeper brand positioning. The BECOME® Framework approach was of great help. It accelerates the work to be done and deepens the positioning of your brand. Advertising is drastically sharpened."
Erik Liebe
Marketing Manager Laundry Unilever
"Robijn is the leading brand of detergent, softener and fragrance sticks in the Netherlands. We did a BECOME® Program to find and formulate the intrinsic why or purpose of the brand and turn that into the right strategy and the right advertising on all levels. The BECOME® Framework approach is a great way to organize your brand in the right logical levels leading to a very specific identity with which advertising agencies can work. It aids in the sharpening of advertisements by testing against target-specific archetypal needs."
Erik Liebe
Marketing Manager Laundry Unilever
"We ran a BECOME® Program to streamline our fast growing organization. It has led to a profound positive change in our company."
Alex Goldblum
CEO Eurofiber
"We did a BECOME® Program with our regional managers to improve our customer intimacy. They were truly challenged and the results were radically streamlining and accelerating our sales efforts."
Paul Verheul
COO Van Oord Marine Ingenuity
"We implemented the BECOME® Framework through a BECOME® Program with a leadership coalition of 90 participants. A unique program that worked out even better than we expected. It created great ownership within the organization and met all the objectives we had set and more. Absolutely unique!"
Leo Oosterveer
CEO Unilever Food Solutions
"The BECOME® approach reframes what a consultancy is. It doesn't come in to fix us — it helps us see, structure and activate the intrinsic strengths we already have."
Rob Willemsen
CCO Bolletje
Users
A selection of the companies and brands that use the BECOME® Framework and have undertaken a BECOME® program.
What BECOME® Practitioners do
With their clients to achieve ultraperformance.
BECOME® ACADEMY
Learn to do it yourself.
BECOME® Academy offers an introductory study followed by four consecutive programs through which leaders, teams and consultants can learn the BECOME® Ontology, the BECOME® Framework and the BECOME® Program and develop their practical expertise. Education alone grants no professional delivery licence; Academy distinguishes knowledge application, independent certified licensing and Alliance Practice participation.
Explore AcademyBECOME® STUDIO
Books. Canvases. Apps. And other tools.
BECOME® Studio develops the books, journals, digital applications and other products that make BECOME® understandable, usable and executable in daily practice. Buying materials does not itself grant professional delivery rights or permission to reproduce or rebrand canvases.
Enter Studio
BECOME® ALLIANCE
Get help to achieve ultraperformance.
BECOME® Alliance brings together entrepreneurial BECOME® Practices worldwide within one integrated organization. We guide organizations through complete BECOME® Programs that change the underlying business thinking, business logic and architecture of the enterprise — structurally resolving, in one integrated move, most of the problems organizations normally try to solve one by one.
Explore Alliance
THE LATEST BOOK ON THE BECOME® RESEARCH
BY SCIENTIST, AUTHOR AND BECOME® INSTITUTE CO-FOUNDER ERIC BARTELS
Welcome To The New Economy
English · Telogeny Trilogy · Book One
What if the greatest obstacle to your company’s future is the thinking that once made it successful?
In Welcome To The New Economy, Eric Bartels explores why the industrial business logic of the twentieth century is losing its relevance — and why some enterprises are already operating by fundamentally different principles.
Drawing on decades of research into leaders and organisations, he connects the rise of AI, changing human motivations and the emergence of a new economy to a question every business leader must confront: what does this mean for the company we are building?
Discover the wider research and thinking behind BECOME® — and a different perspective on what your enterprise could become.
Explore BECOME® — free PDF booklets
This free PDF booklet introduces BECOME® and the forthcoming book by Eric Bartels.
This 32-page booklet explains what a BECOME® Program is, which products and services support it, and how the ultraperformance logic is implemented in an enterprise, including its pricing structure. Download the PDF for free.
Press & Media
A selection of coverage of BECOME® and Eric Bartels.
De Telegraaf
A full-page interview with Eric Bartels in the Netherlands' largest newspaper to mark the 2026 launch of his book 'Welcome To The New Economy'.
ManagementSite
An in-depth review of 'Welcome To The New Economy' by Eric Bartels was published in April 2026 in the widely read Dutch business magazine ManagementSite.
Financieel Dagblad
An interview with Eric Bartels about his career as internet pioneer in 'Het Financieel Dagblad', the Netherlands' leading business newspaper.
More interviews, reviews and publications are available in our press room.
All press & media