The story of Praxis goes back thirty years ago. During the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, as Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israel, Dr. Zvi Lanir, the founder of Praxis, was serving as a senior intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Force. The Yom Kippur Postwar analyses suggested that the surprise occurred because of an IDF intelligence failure in collecting, analyzing and distributing of information. Dr. Lanir's investigation revealed, however, that on the eve of the war, Israeli intelligence possessed almost perfect information regarding what was about to occur. Dr. Lanir studied other similar famous fiascoes, such as Pearl Harbor and Barbarossa, and found that in these cases too, the surprise occurred despite a situation of almost perfect information. Based on these findings he developed the theory of Fundamental Surprise - surprises that occur not due to deficiencies in information but because of a mind set that turned out to be irrelevant to the interpretations of the events.

Ever since the publication of his theory, the phenomenon of Fundamental Surprise was evident once and again. Not only in national defense (for example on the September 11th terror attack), but in many other organizational, business and social domains.

Despite these evidences most of the scientific and technological efforts have been spent on creating solutions that are aimed at improving the collection, analysis and retrieval of information. Astonishing as it is, in order to do their framing and reframing thinking, people still have to make do with papers, white boards and word processors.

Based on more than 20 years of theoretical as well as laboratory and field research, Praxis was founded in 1994 to provide individuals, groups and organizations with reframing methods, tools and services to empower. Thus empowering them in creating new knowledge and ideas in order to remain relevant through fundamental changes.

Praxis' method and tools complement Information Technologies by allowing not only better and faster 'in the box' decision-making, but also 'out of the box' reframing thinking.