Abstract. Integral Theory is a school of philosophy that seeks to integrate all human knowledge disciplines into a single "content-free" framework. Because of its general and comprehensive nature, Integral Theory has been successfully applied "in over 35 distinct academic and professional fields, such as art, healthcare, organizational management, ecology, congregational ministry, economics, psychotherapy, law and feminism." (Esbjörn-Hargens, 2009). Leaning on some pioneering work in the field of architecture, this paper looks at ways to apply Integral Theory to the discipline of systems engineering. A major benefit of Integral Theory is that it enables us to look at the world with a broader perspective. Using this perspective, we can develop improved methods in how we design systems, solve problems, improve engineering organizations and build stronger technical leaders.

Storytelling is an important skill that can be a key enabler for systems engineering, providing value throughout the systems engineering process. In areas such as requirements, design and testing, storytelling can improve the ability to communicate across boundaries, providing improved context, understanding and empathy between project stakeholders. At the project level, storytelling is useful in enhancing communication and engagement, thereby helping to improve team performance. Finally, storytelling can help promote the profession of systems engineering, at the organizational level and beyond, helping to instill pride in our profession, as well as sharing culture and values.

This paper proposes that beauty is a useful guiding principle for systems engineering. Integral Theory, a school of philosophy founded by Ken Wilber, suggests that systems engineering should pay more attention to subjective perspectives, including things like culture and beauty. Beauty and aesthetics are often considered in product design. Beauty has been observed to be a valuable guiding principle in the world of science. This paper suggests that beauty may also be a useful guiding principle for systems engineering, and looks at ways this idea can be applied.

One of the recent developments in systems engineering has been the expansion of its focus to include sociotechnical systems. As systems become larger and more complex, the interactions between humans and systems become more important, as do the interactions between systems and the environment. There have been calls for systems engineering to adapt to these changes. New disciplines and new frameworks have been proposed in response. In this paper, it is argued that these new disciplines and frameworks will have a limited impact because they have a limited viewpoint: they only make use of objective perspectives. It is proposed that an Integral approach, based on Ken Wilber's Integral Theory, which makes use of both subjective and objective perspectives, can have a greater impact on the discipline of systems engineering in the development of sociotechnical systems. This proposal includes the introduction of a subjective toolbox, which enables more effective use of subjective perspectives, and results in a more human‐centric approach to systems engineering.