Prof.Dr. Otto Scharmer

Dr. Otto Scharmer is lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), co-founder of the MIT Lab and a visiting professor at the Helsinki School of Economics. He is also co-founder of the Global Institute for Responsible Leadership.

With considerable experience and insight into the principles of corporate change and organisational learning, Dr. Scharmer educates decision makers from all fields with his highly informative presentations focusing on developing sound business strategies whilst maintaining social responsibility.

Dr. Scharmer earned his MBA and Ph.D. from Witten/Herdecke University, Germany. In 1989-90 he co-founded and directed ‘Peace Studies around the World’, a year-long programme in which the participants study the politics of peace and conflict at twelve universities on every continent. For co-pioneering this innovative approach to learning with peace researcher John Galtung, he was awarded the Innovation Prize of the Foundation for Industry Research in 1991.

From 1995-2000 as part of his postdoctoral research at MIT, he conducted 100 dialogue interviews with eminent thinkers of leadership, strategy and knowledge creation around the world as well as interviews with CEOs of high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. In his most recent work, he synthesizes this research on leadership, collaborating closely with Peter Senge of MIT, Joseph Jaworski of Generon, and Ikujiro Nonaka of Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo.

Currently Dr. Scharmer is completing a book called ‘Presencing: Illuminating the Blind Spot of Leadership’ (working title). He is a founding member of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) and also a faculty member of the Fujitsu Global Knowledge Institute, Tokyo. He has consulted with multinational firms in the United States, Europe, and Japan.

An informative and experienced speaker, Dr. Scharmer is now in great demand by corporations eager to benefit from his ongoing research into innovative leadership. He presents in English and German.