u.school:
Creating Collective Leadership Capacity for Society 4.0
Leaders in all institutions face unprecedented challenges: climate change, food and
water crises, peak oil, financial and educational crises, unemployment, social
exclusion, and massive “unforeseeable” disruptive events such as 9/11 and
Fukushima. As the intensity of the disruptions and conflict surrounding strategic
resources accelerates over the next decades, new rapid-response and leadership
capacities are needed to address the root causes of these challenges.
The u.school
New global strategies and new collaborations are needed that bring together leaders
from developed, emerging, and also non-industrialized countries to build the
collective capacity to act, using systems thinking, cooperation, and innovation, while
engaging all the relevant stakeholder groups. Currently, neither the academy nor
conventional leadership development programs have the ability to create such
cross-sector collective leadership capacity.
Building on MIT’s tradition of generating solutions to some of society’s most
pressing challenges, a small core of MIT-based innovators at the Presencing
Institute (PI) has been building and road-testing elements of a broad societal
innovation platform that connects leaders across cultures and generations. We are
calling this platform the u.school for its central emphasis on self-awareness and selfknowledge as a core capacity of 21st-century leadership and for its use of Theory U
and other awareness-based systems thinking frameworks and leadership
technologies.1
First Results
After just three years of successful prototyping, results include: mission-driven
companies (JustPower); a multi-stakeholder dialogue–based approach to
policymaking in the federal government of Indonesia; a climate leadership lab in
South Africa and Indonesia (sponsored by GIZ); a highly successful anti-corruption
process designed to improve government services in Bojonegoro, Indonesia;
institutional transformation of the premier state-owned bank in Indonesia (BNI);
and the launch at MIT of an action-research planning and development lab in the
Department of Urban Studies and Planning (MIT Community Innovators Lab
(CoLab)). CoLab is now piloting living examples of Theory U-based multi sector
1 Scharmer, C. Otto (2009), Theory U: Leading from the Emerging Future as It Emerges: The Social
Technology of Presencing (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler). Senge, P., C. O. Scharmer, J. Jaworski, and
B. S. Flowers (2004), Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (Cambridge, MA: SoL Press).
Senge, Peter (1990), The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.
u.school
initiatives in the US, Brazil, Nicaragua, and the Caribbean.
In its third year, the MIT IDEAS and ELIAS Programs provide a powerful blueprint
for the u.school model by engaging high-potential business leaders, government
officials, and civil society change-makers in a profound 9 month leadership journey.
They have repeatedly made strides toward personal and relational transformation
while generating innovation prototypes for their organizations and communities.
Next Steps
The u.school is ready for implementation at scale and is seeking partners to invest in
building a global capacity to meet the emerging demand for transformative
collective leadership. Over the next five years, the u.school will expand its networks
and practical work through the MIT Community Innovators Lab and other
innovation hubs; create degree programs in partnership with selected universities
and capacity-building institutions; and build action research hubs in Europe, the US,
Brazil, Asia (China, Indonesia, India), and Africa (northern and southern). In 2013,
PI will launch its first degree program, an action research PhD in collaboration with
Witten/Herdecke University in Germany (and other universities).
The u.school will uniquely generate actionable knowledge for creating an economy
and society that is more sustainable, inclusive, resilient, and aware (society 4.0), and
offer degree-granting programs that enable graduate level studies to create new
knowledge about the technologies of social innovation-- while providing
professional capacity-building programs that enable emerging high-potential
leaders to meet, connect, and co-create prototypes that explore societal innovations
by doing. Leveraging the powerful networks brought by partner institutions, the
u.school will help leaders and change-makers work across institutional boundaries
to generate well-being and resilience broadly in communities, even the most
marginalized.
The u.school Platform
Three key elements will constitute the core of the u.school platform (see fig. below):

Research: An action research network in partnership with a small global core
of academic institutions will create a presencing-based action research PhD
track. A core group of 20-25 PhD students will have full access to the global
ecology of profound innovation initiatives.

Leadership Capacity Building: A growing suite of capacity-building
programs, both in-person and on-line, in the global North and global South will
be co-delivered in partnership with cutting-edge practitioners from “hot spots
of societal innovation” to create a vibrant learning environment for changemakers across generations, sectors, and cultures.

Prototyping: A global ecology of multi-sector initiatives will be developed in
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u.school
“living laboratories” for profound societal innovation.
U.school
Academic and
Research
Partners, Sponsors
AAR
(Awareness Based Ac on Research)
• Research Roundtables
• Research Retreats
• Prac ce Doctoral Program
• Global Dialogue Forum
Social
Communi es
Technologies
of Prac ce
Presencing
Global Forum
Innova on Labs
• Health Lab
• Educa on Lab
• Food and Fish Lab
• Finance Lab
• Resilient Ci es Lab
•Democracy Lab
Prototypes
Capacity Building Programs
• Founda on Program
• Global Classroom
• ELIAS/IDEAS
• Masterclass
•Systems Thinking
• Process Consulta on
Innovation Lab
Partners, Sponsors
Capacity Building
Partners, Sponsors
The graduate curriculum will have three tracks:
i.
Science of Systems and Sustainability: Dealing with dynamic
complexity, when cause and effect are not close in time and space
ii.
Managing Multi-stakeholder Innovation: Dealing with social
complexity, when there exist many competing worldviews, values,
and goals
iii.
Leadership Presence and Mindfulness: Dealing with generative
complexity, when problem conditions have little or no historical
precedent
Partners
The u.school will also leverage the world-class network of schools, centers, and labs
at MIT and in the Boston-Cambridge area. Partners include the Sustainability Group
(SSRG), the MIT Leadership Center, the MIT CoLab, the MIT Center for Collective
Intelligence, the Media Lab, as well as selected faculty from the Harvard Ed School
and the Harvard Kennedy School. In addition, the u.school works with partners in
Brazil, China, Germany, Indonesia, and Southern Africa.
Contact
Otto Scharmer
scharmer@mit.edu
Dayna Cunningham dayna@mit.edu
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u.school
Katrin Kaeufer
kaeufer@mit.edu
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