Do we want to make business as human as possible? This is a challenge because we often regard most relationships to do with business as some sort of ‘mechanism’. Whether we regard it like this or not depends on the way in which people who lead business think. Can we, people who are inclined to cultivate the human spirit, approach business leaders and engage with them in examining different aspects in their business that have perhaps been reduced into mechanism?

In order to do that we will firstly need to share the understanding that wherever business is allowed to reduce itself into mechanism, problems occur. Furthermore, in order to prevent these problems from occurring, and accumulating over time, a certain awareness is required: a constant observation and examination of the concepts that form the business's activity.

Human beings, with their needs on the one side and their capacities on the other, are always the living forces behind business activity. But this reality seems to shine dimly through the dominance of the mechanistic approach. Can we emphasize this reality so that we feel more human in our business relations and operations, alongside the technical aspects of them? And if we do so, what will become of businesses?

These are the kind of questions that lie in the heart of our LiB research group. We observe society and see that money is initially generated through businesses, but tends to accumulate and, so to speak, get "stuck" there without sufficient circulation to spiritually inclined people. At the same time, we, generally speaking, see spiritually inclined people also remaining "stuck" in their own way, i.e. in closed circles, engaged in spiritual activities concerning soul and spirit, while remaining aloof from the world of business.

But business needs an emphasized human element in order to balance the increasing problems it evidently carries with it. Just to mention a few examples: alienation from nature, from each other (as reflected by the overwhelming social-economic inequality figures), often from our work, and furthermore we can speak about the ambiance of mistrust that seems inherent in most of our business relations. This is partly why business people may need a balancing nourishment that spiritually inclined people may provide, but spiritually inclined people need nourishment from business too, partly for their material needs but also for their own development. Spiritually inclined people often find it hard to arrive at a state of financial well-being, and this in turn of course hinders their possibility to influence back. And so, we wish to bridge this abyss. To awaken and enhance this much needed mutual nourishment. In order for this to happen, an attraction and capability by spiritually inclined people to penetrate the world of business with their thinking is needed, and on the other hand, we need to encounter an attraction by business people to explore the relationship between the inner and outer aspects of their businesses.

Is this possible?