Elliott Jaques

Elliott Jaques was born in Toronto, Canada in 1917. He was only 18 when he graduated from the University of Toronto in 1935, and only 23 when he graduated with an M.D. from Johns Hopkins Medical School. He rounded out his academic credentials with a PhD in Social Relations from Harvard University.

During WWII, he served in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, in England, serving as liaison to the British Army War Office Psychiatry Division. After the war, he stayed in England to study under Melanie Klein and was one of the founding members of Tavistock Institute. It was during this time, that he became dissatisfied with psychological explanations of group work and ventured to explore a more scientific, disciplined approach to human development. In 1964, he created the School of Social Sciences at London based Brunel University.

It was, through this period, that he observed and documented what later would become Requisite Organization. His scientific findings would be the subject of studies conducted from 1948 until his death in 2003. More than 50 years of rigorous trials support his principles about how organizations run better.