David H. Collins / The founder and the questions
Before i⁹ was a company, it was a question that changed the direction of a life.
David Collins has spent more than forty years pursuing a deceptively human question: what helps a person become fully alive—and find a place where their contribution matters?
A life redirected
by a better question.
Click through the moments that took an ambitious young professional from a conventional definition of success to a lifelong pursuit of human possibility.
Capable of succeeding. But at what?
At J.P. Morgan, an anxiety attack confronted David with an unsettling possibility: he might be very good at building a life he did not actually want to live.
“What does a successful life mean if it isn’t mine?”
✳
From what am I good at? to What brings me alive? to Where could I matter?
The practice behind the philosophy
Across education, career development, organizational culture and service, Collins built organizations, tools and experiences that helped people look beyond labels and consider where they could flourish.
After studying at Middlebury and the London School of Economics, his intellectual journey ranged across finance, human development, research, systems thinking and exchanges with thinkers at Harvard and MIT, including Marvin Minsky. The question remained surprisingly constant: How can understanding a person more deeply lead to wiser choices?
Today, i⁹ is the technology and enterprise expression of that inquiry—a way to make nuanced Human Intelligence useful across many settings.
Human motivation
Intelligences
Organizational culture
Fit & possibility
Meaningful choice
What if NOW
has an inside?
The Amber Dot is David's exploration of the moment before a choice—the point where what has happened meets what has not yet been written.
There may be more than one kind of time inside a single moment. Choose a question on the diagram.
What is this time for?
The time of meaning, discovery, purpose and calling. Not just what comes next, but what could become possible.
DotME IN THE MOMENT
Prediction is not
possibility.
Imagine being offered a prestigious new role. Everyone says it is the obvious next step. But something in you hesitates.
What might change when you ask a different question?
“This is what successful people do next.”
That may be the right choice. But a continuation of past momentum is not, by itself, a reason.
Ideas put into conversation
David has brought ideas about human intelligence, purposeful work, leadership and development to audiences across business, education and civic life. His speaking history includes events for J.P. Morgan, Bloomberg, U.S. News & World Report, the PBS Board of Directors and the Points of Light National Convention.
From conference stages to classrooms, the aim has remained the same: help someone see a person—and a possibility—differently.
The throughline
01
See
See past the labels and uncover distinctive human patterns.
02
Connect
Find relationships among people, opportunities and contexts.
03
Become
Make room for growth and new possibilities.
04
Matter
Turn possibility into contribution and meaning.
From the notebooks / Three enduring curiosities
The thread running through the work is not another instrument. It’s a fascination with how people discover what matters, and what changes when they find a context in which they can contribute.
These are thematic sketches, not archival quotes or reproductions of actual notebooks.
Who are we, beneath our labels?
A human being is never captured by the first description we give them. We can keep learning to see more.
A studio of questions
Not a founder’s final answer. An invitation to bring your own intelligence, experience and imagination to the conversation.
Some ideas aren't answers.
They're invitations.
“What brings this person alive?”
Understanding motivation helps us move past ability alone and toward possibilities that matter.
The idea behind i⁹
The clock can tell us what time it is; only a human being can decide what this time is for.