Otto Scharmer (born 1961) is a senior lecturer at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
(MIT) and co-founder of the Presencing Institute and its u-school for Transformation.
He focuses on
awareness
In philosophy and psychology, awareness is the perception or knowledge of something. The concept is often synonymous with consciousness. However, one can be aware of something without being explicitly conscious of it, such as in the case of bli ...
-based
action research
Action research is a philosophy and methodology of research generally applied in the social sciences. It seeks transformative change through the simultaneous process of taking action and doing research, which are linked together by critical refle ...
with leaders across various sectors,
[ anchored in the concept of , a method of "learning from the emerging future", which he introduced in his books ''Theory U'' (2007) and ''Presence'' (2004, co-authored with ]Peter Senge
Peter Michael Senge (born 1947) is an American systems scientist who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute, and the founder of the Society for Organizational Learni ...
and others).
Early life and education
Otto Scharmer was born and raised near Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
, Germany, where his experiences on his family's farm significantly influenced his future work. The principles of regenerative farming, as practiced by his father, laid the foundation for Scharmer's later concepts of social fields and systems change. Scharmer earned his diploma and PhD in economics from Witten/Herdecke University.
Career
Throughout his career, Scharmer has focused on cross-sector systems transformation, introducing the concept of presencing in his books ''Theory U'' (2007, 2nd edition 2016) and ''Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society'' (2004, co-authored with Peter Senge and others). In ''Leading from the Emerging Future'' (2013, co-authored with Katrin Kaufer), Scharmer explored the transition from egocentric to ecocentric economic systems, identifying key leverage points for systemic change.
Scharmer co-founded the MITx u-lab, a platform that has engaged over 250,000 participants from 186 countries in transformational learning and change initiatives.
Theory U
Awards and honors
He received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching at MIT (2015), and the EU Leonardo Corporate Learning Award for the contributions of Theory U to the future of management (2016). In 2017 he was ranked #1 of the world's top 30 education professionals by globalgurus.org.
Selected publications
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References
External links
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Living people
MIT Sloan School of Management faculty
1961 births
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