Dr. C. Otto Scharmer is a Senior Lecturer at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a founding co-director
of ELIAS (Emerging Leaders for Innovations Across Systems), a joint leadership development initiative of the UN
Global Compact, and the Society for Organizational Learning
(SoL), along with leading global companies, the World Bank, and
NGOs. ELIAS uses the U process of presencing to help young
executives co-create profound systems innovations for a more
sustainable world. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Center
for Innovation and Knowledge Research, Helsinki School of
Economics. An international action researcher, he is a
co-founder SoL and has consulted with multinational firms and
international institutions in the United States, Europe, and
Asia.
Scharmer holds a Ph.D. in economics and management from
Witten-Herdecke University, Germany. His article
“Strategic Leadership within the Triad
Growth-Employment-Ecology” won the McKinsey Research Award
in 1991. His most recent work has included research in the form
of dialogue interviews with 150 eminent thinkers on leadership,
strategy, and knowledge creation. A synthesis of this research
has resulted in a theoretical framework and practice called
presencing, which he elaborates in his forthcoming book,
Theory U: Leading from the Future as it
Emerges, as well as in a co-authored book with Peter Senge,
Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers, Presence: Human
Purpose and the Field of the Future (2004). With his
colleagues, Otto has used presencing to facilitate profound
innovation and change processes both within companies and across societal systems. He lives with his wife and their two children in Boston, Massachusetts.
selected books
Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future
with P. Senge, J. Jaworski, and B. S. Flowers (Society for Organizational Learning, 2004)
Buy at Amazon
selected articles
“The Presence of the Circle Being”
A conversation with the Circle of Seven, Ashland, OR, Sept. 2003. For more on what Otto Scharmer calls “the circle being,” see
http://www.dialogonleadership.org/interviewC07.htm
MIT OpenCourseWare, Sloan School of Management Leadership Lab for Corporate Social InnovationA sample of Otto Scharmer's corporate course ware developed for MIT's Sloan School of Management.
http://www.ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-974Leadership-LabSpring2003/CourseHome/index.htm
Theory U: Leading Profound Innovation and Change by Presencing Emerging Futures(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004)
http://www.ottoscharmer.com/downloads2.htm
organizational affiliations
The Society for Organizational Learning
SoL fosters collaboration among corporations that are committed to fundamental organizational change and to building learning organizations.
http://www.solonline.org/
Global Leadership InitiativeThis institute is dedicated to building leadership capacity, tackling critical social issues, and producing concrete results.
http://www.globalleadershipinitiative.org/
other related websites
http://www.ottoscharmer.com/
http://www.presence.net
Dialog on Leadershiphttp://www.dialogonleadership.org
