i4cp - Strategic Investment
The Human Resource Institute was founded in 1967 by a couple of academics, Rensis Likert and George Odiorne, who probably never imagined their work would morph into one of the most quietly influential players in workforce strategy nearly six decades later. But fast forward to 2007, and Kevin Oakes picked up that thread with i4cp, turning intellectuallineage into a living, breathing force in human capital research. And now, in 2025, with a fresh strategic investment from Boston’s M.C. Partners and the arrival of new CEO Terry Waters, the The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) is quietly loading the next round.
This isn’t your average HR think tank. i4cp has built a business on the things that don’t make headlines; 10,000+ pages of proprietary research a year, vendor-free data models, and peer-driven insights pulled straight from the boardrooms of Nike, IBM, Mastercard, and @Campbell Soup Company. You know, the folks who don’t just talk about “culture” in earnings calls, they live and die by it. When your research helps steer the strategy of companies who shape entire economies, it’s not about buzzwords. It’s about impact, precision, and the kind of discipline that gets you on the Inc 5000 list eight years in a row.
Now let’s talk about that new fuel in the tank. M.C. Partners doesn’t just cut checks, they specialize in scaling tech-driven services. So this isn’t about glitz, it’s about operational torque. With Waters stepping in, former Yankee Group CEO, ex-Gartner leadership, this is a chess move, not a Hail Mary. Kevin Oakes, the original builder of i4cp, isn’t walking away. He’s doubling down on the thought leadership side, where he’s been setting the tone for years with frameworks like the Learning Culture Index and the HR Tech Adoption Model. Translation: the bench just got deeper, the playbook more aggressive.
The strategy? Expand the research muscle. Enhance the tech stack powering their peer boards and analytics portals. Grow the global executive networks. And, of course, help enterprise leaders get their arms around the two biggest X-factors of our time: Gen AI and hybrid work. i4cp isn’t chasing trends; they’re quietly out in front, helping the companies that set trends stay human while scaling like machines.
There’s something poetic about a company built on next practices instead of best practices. Because “best” implies the game’s over. i4cp is proof it’s just getting interesting. When your research model is cleaner than the vendor pitch deck, when your HRtech is built for insight not upsell, and when your client list reads like the Fortune 500 highlight reel, you don’t need to shout. You just keep building. The market listens.