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Glossary · Definition
Institutional memory
TL;DR. Institutional memory is the state where the reasoning behind past decisions is still readable months later, by people who weren't in the room when the call was made. Without it, every team rediscovers the same lesson twice a year.
Org charts move, tools change, people leave. What persists in a studio is the record of decisions and the reasoning behind them, or it doesn't, in which case the studio is younger than it looks.
Institutional memory in a single-product company is a wiki problem. In a multi-product studio it's a portfolio problem: the lesson learned on Game 2 should be available to whoever is making the same call on App 5, even if those products have different team leads.
Qualia treats institutional memory as per-product but cross-readable. Each product has its own decision record. Any operator with portfolio access can read across them. The lesson doesn't have to be re-learned.