Otto Scharmer is Senior Lecturer at MIT and the founding chair of ELIAS (Emerging Leaders for Innovation Across Sectors), an initiative focused on developing profound system innovations for a more sustainable world. ELIAS links twenty leading global institutions across the three sectors of business, government, and civil society.

He also chairs the MIT IDEAS programme for cross-sector innovation in China and Indonesia and co-founded the Global Wellbeing Lab.

Scharmer is a Visiting Professor at the Center for Innovation and Knowledge Research, Helsinki School of Economics, and the founding chair of the Presencing Institute, a research initiative on developing and advancing social technologies for leading innovation and change.

He has co-designed and delivered award-winning leadership programmes for client organisations including DaimlerChrysler, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Fujitsu. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges (2007) and Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society (2005), co-authored with Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers.

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