Otto Scharmer - A New Social Technology for Transforming Capitalism and Deepening Democracy

Otto Scharmer, coauthor of the acclaimed book, Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, believes we must engage with our future by literally “knowing” it in the moment and responding to it proactively. To achieve this, he and his associates at the Society for Organizational Learning (or SOL) have developed a technique they call “presencing” (as in pre-sensing what is to come). Scharmer and his associates seek to tap into this subtle yet potent process in order to effect profound and evolutionary innovation and change in individuals, organizations, and societies. In this presentation, recorded at the Foxhollow Forum in western Massachusetts, Professor Scharmer speaks about his personal commitment to the science and practice of change, and discusses the inspired origins of his integral model for individual and collective transformation: the “U” theory.

BIO

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.