TERMS OF USE & RESEARCH LICENSING


Transformation Management Institute™
Last updated: January 2026

1. Purpose and scope

The Transformation Management Institute™ (“TMI,” “the Institute”) is a non-commercial research institute. The Institute publishes open-access research and stewarded instruments. The Institute does not provide consulting, advisory, implementation, or client-delivery services.

These Terms govern all access, use, citation, reproduction, distribution, adaptation, integration, and application of Institute materials, whether accessed through the Institute’s website or obtained through redistribution.

These Terms exist to:

  • preserve integrity, traceability, and scope control across Institute publications

  • prevent unauthorized commercial appropriation, rebranding, and derivative frameworks

  • permit open scholarly and educational use under clear attribution and representation rules

By accessing Institute materials, you agree to these Terms.

2. Institute stewardship and corpus

The Institute stewards and publishes work across three research programs and one applied practice discipline.

Research programs (scientific canon)

  • General Theory of Interpretation (GTOI), which produces Meaning System Science (MSS) and the Institute’s official terminology

  • System Existence Theory (SET), which specifies when system is an admissible category of analysis at a stated boundary

  • Transformation Science, which studies coordinated change attempts as time-extended system events under constraint

Applied practice discipline

  • Transformation Management, the Institute’s applied discipline that translates research outputs into governance instruments, including standards, diagnostics, and classification tools

Institute materials include monographs, field studies, diagrams, models, equations, terminology, definitions, standards, instruments, protocols, and related documentation (the “Materials”).

3. Intellectual property and rights reserved

Institute Materials are protected under applicable copyright, trademark, and unfair-competition law.

Except for the limited permissions explicitly granted in Section 4, the Institute reserves all rights. No license is granted by implication, estoppel, or otherwise.

4. Open-access uses permitted without a license

The Institute permits open-access use for non-commercial scholarship and responsible public learning, provided attribution is preserved and representation remains accurate.

Permitted uses (non-commercial, no separate license required):

  • quoting or excerpting limited portions of Institute text, definitions, diagrams, or equations with attribution

  • linking to official Institute pages

  • academic teaching, classroom discussion, coursework, and non-commercial educational use

  • academic papers, presentations, independent research, critique, and commentary

  • internal organizational study or reference where no fees are charged and Materials are not presented as a paid offering

Open-access permission does not include the right to commercialize, repackage, rebrand, operationalize, embed into products, or distribute derivative instruments. If you are charging fees, selling access, marketing an offering, or using the Materials to support value delivery, a license is required.

Required attribution (default)

Vallejo, J. (Year). [Page or document title]. Transformation Management Institute. URL

For formal formats, see Citation Guidelines.

5. Prohibited uses without a license

Any commercial, derivative, misleading, or extractive use of Institute Materials is prohibited without a written license from the Institute.

5.1 Commercial use

You may not use Institute Materials for any revenue-generating activity, including:

  • paid consulting, advising, coaching, or training

  • fee-based courses, workshops, seminars, or certification preparation

  • paid transformation, leadership, governance, or operating-model programs that rely on Institute constructs

  • paid distribution of guides, templates, playbooks, toolkits, or scorecards grounded in Institute constructs

  • any service, program, or offering where Institute Materials support value delivery, pricing, or market differentiation

5.2 Derivation, rebranding, or masked use

You may not, without a license:

  • recreate Institute constructs into a new “framework,” “methodology,” or proprietary model

  • use alternative terminology to disguise derivative use

  • combine Institute constructs with other systems and resell as “hybrid IP”

  • publish diagnostics, maturity models, rubrics, scoring systems, “operating systems,” or governance products derived from Institute constructs

  • claim independent origination of Institute concepts

“Inspired-by” products that reproduce Institute logic, structure, variable relationships, or diagnostic form are treated as derivative works for the purposes of these Terms.

5.3 AI, software, and automated system restrictions

You may not, without a license:

  • train, fine-tune, or adapt commercial AI models on Institute Materials

  • build commercial RAG systems, agents, embeddings, or reasoning systems that substantially incorporate Institute Materials

  • embed Institute constructs into proprietary software, dashboards, algorithms, taxonomies, ontologies, or knowledge graphs offered commercially

  • redistribute Institute Materials through automated outputs in a manner that reproduces or closely approximates Institute formulations as a product feature

5.4 Unauthorized use of Institute branding and marks

You may not use Institute names, marks, or confusingly similar variants in a manner that implies affiliation, endorsement, authorization, sponsorship, or certification.

6. Licensing for commercial use

Any revenue-generating use of Institute Materials requires a written licensing agreement executed by the Institute.

Licensing is required for (non-exhaustive):

  • paid consulting, coaching, training, workshops, or course delivery using Institute constructs

  • commercial methodologies, toolchains, or programs that incorporate Institute constructs

  • SaaS products incorporating Institute constructs, standards, or instruments

  • commercial AI systems trained on, embedding, operationalizing, or emitting Institute formulations

  • commercial diagnostics, scorecards, rubrics, governance products, or operating systems derived from Institute constructs

Licensing requests:
research@3ETMI.org

All licensing decisions are discretionary and may include integrity controls, attribution requirements, scope constraints, and representation standards.

7. Accuracy and representation standards

To prevent public confusion and protect version integrity, the Institute may request correction, retraction, or removal of content that:

  • materially misrepresents or distorts Institute definitions, variable relationships, or analytic constraints

  • presents Institute Materials as independently originated work

  • rebrands Institute constructs into unrelated consulting frameworks

  • implies Institute endorsement, certification, affiliation, or authorization without written permission

  • presents modified Materials as official Institute standards, instruments, or terminology

8. AI use permitted for non-commercial research

Permitted without a license (non-commercial):

  • indexing and search for personal study or scholarly analysis

  • non-commercial embeddings used for private research or academic work

  • academic research, critique, and commentary

Restricted (license required):

  • commercial model training, fine-tuning, or dataset construction using Institute Materials

  • commercial RAG, agent, or reasoning systems substantially incorporating Institute Materials

  • any commercial system designed to output, operationalize, or approximate Institute formulations

Where AI use is permitted, attribution must be preserved in dataset metadata and documentation.

9. Personal use

Individuals may read, study, reference, and discuss Institute Materials publicly with attribution. Personal use does not include resale, paid instruction, paid services, certification preparation for a fee, or incorporation into commercial offerings.

10. Enforcement

Unauthorized use may be addressed through available remedies, including:

  • cease-and-desist notices

  • DMCA takedowns

  • trademark enforcement actions

  • claims under unfair-competition law

  • civil litigation where appropriate

Priority enforcement includes:

  • consultancy appropriation and rebranded derivatives

  • unauthorized diagnostics, scorecards, “operating systems,” or governance products derived from Institute constructs

  • paid programs presenting Institute concepts as proprietary method

  • commercial AI systems trained on or emitting Institute formulations

11. Contact

For licensing, permissions, legal inquiries, or to report misuse:
research@3ETMI.org

Copyright notice

© 2026 Transformation Management Institute™. All rights reserved.

Institute publications and associated Materials—including the General Theory of Interpretation (GTOI), System Existence Theory (SET), Transformation Science, and Transformation Management instruments—are protected by copyright, trademark, and applicable intellectual property law.

Personal, academic, and educational use with attribution is permitted. Any commercial use requires a written licensing agreement. Unauthorized reproduction, adaptation, rebranding, or commercialization is prohibited.