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January 2008 - February 2009

ELIASPROJECT 2.0

ELIASEMERGING LEADERSINNOVATE ACROSS SECTORS

Kick-offDialogue

FoundationsProgram

Cross-institutionalpeer shadowingand stakeholder

interviews

Sensemaking Deep-Dive Journey

Prototype Review

Final Session

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2007 ELIAS Emerging Leaders Innov ate Across Sectors 1

ELIAS 2.0

The Presencing Institute, the Society for Organizational Learning, the MIT LeadershipCenter, and the MIT Center for ReflectiveCommunity Practice are launching thesecond year of the program EmergingLeaders Innovate Across Sectors (ELIAS).ELIAS is a global cross-sector network of high-potential leaders and their institutionsworking collectively to generate new ideas,prototypes, and ventures. The purpose of ELIAS is to contribute to the evolution of sustainable global market systems that buildhuman, social, and natural capital as well asfinancial and industrial capital.

Concrete outcomes of this 12-monthleadership journey are:

Prototypes for cross-sector innovationthat address the shared challenges of creating value for the triple bottom linethe economy, society, and theenvironmentwith the ultimate goal of advancing global sustainability.

A steadily growing network of leaders inthe public, private, and civic sectors thatwill enhance and accelerate the benefitsto individual members.

A growing capacity among participatingorganizations to develop sustainablesolutions across the three sectors.

Useful information and ideas for innovative solutions to individualmembers challenges.

An enhanced capacity among leaders torespond to the challenges of globalizationand sustainable development bypioneering practical innovations.

Co-founders of ELIAS include, BASF, BP,Nissan, Oxfam Great Britain, the UN GlobalCompact, Unilever, the World Bank Institute,and the World Wildlife Fund.

Why ELIAS?

Leaders in institutions around the world faceunprecedented economic, social, ecological,and political challenges locally and globally.These challenges will only multiply in the nextdecades; leaders must confront them. Indoing so, they can create opportunities for innovation by reinventing business modelsand identities, transforming social changeprotocols, and working more collaborativelywith governments.

Community Value will become the guidingterm as successful companies of this centurypurposefully connect to communities, NGOs,and governments to co-create moretransparent and generative economic, social,and ecological processes/relationships. Theresult will be productive, healthy and soundbusiness, social, and environmentalrelationships.

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Future sources of value will stem fromleveraging these four areas of innovation.But for that to happen, leaders and

institutions must reach out to other stakeholders to create new patterns thatweave together business, government, andcivil society.

To meet major global challenges, cross-sector engagement demands new skills,networks, and fields of practice. ELIASprovides both the stimulating context or practice field and active methodologies.

Approach:

Using a methodology called presencing i toachieve profound innovations, ELIASprovides participants with a core set of practical skills:

Immersion in cross-sector peer-shadowingexperiences and deep-dive learning

journeys in different regions offer a freshview into another aspect of the globaleconomy and some of its core issues.

Deep listening and dialogue tools helpparticipants operate more powerfully andeffectively as part of rapidly changingsystems of value creation.

Deep reflection practices help participantsconvert experiential input into improvedleadership practices and to communicatewith more authentic leadership presence.

Hands-on prototyping allows participants

to create experimental microcosms inorder to explore the future by doing.

Participants experience innovationprocesses from concept creation to fast-cycle experimentation; teams build, test,refine, and improve prototype ideas

through multiple iterations in variouscontexts with multiple feedback loops.

Participants learn how to leverage their institutional and personal networks inorder to move their systems toward moreeffective ways of operating.

Regular interaction among participantsand institutional stakeholders helps embedinnovation within participating institutions.

How does it work?

From 2008, ELIAS will operate on four levels:

1. The Global ELIAS PlatformEmerging highest-potential leadersnominated by the CEOs of their institutions to participate in a globalinnovation program will receive intensivetraining in core presencing skills,participate in deep dives, and learn todevelop and guide prototypingexperiences. A proposed curriculum isattached.

2. An Evolving Network of Regional ELIAS PlatformsCountry-level and regional programs willcontinue to be organized by ELIASparticipants. Currently, these are beingplanned for Indonesia, southern Africa,Europe, and China, with a possible fifthcountry-level program in Brazil. In each of these places, ELIAS alumni havecommitted to being core leaders and

faculty in country-level and regionalELIAS efforts. These efforts will alsocreate opportunities for high-potentialleaders from ELIAS member institutionsto join ELIAS programs at any level.

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Indonesia and Southern Africa: EachELIAS microcosm will take on a keychallenge facing each country (e.g.,

flooding in Jakarta; social protectionfor children orphaned by AIDS inNamibia). It will also bring together young and future leaders from globalELIAS companies/institutions. Jointlythese teams will put their skills andstrategic networks into the service of solving pressing problems in the localcommunity.

Europe: The Summer School projectled by ELIAS alums from BASF,

InWEnt, UNICEF, and WWF iscurrently experimenting with usingcross-institutional ELIAS platformsand younger leaders to addressleadership challenges related to water issues in Africa and China.

China: The Learning Lab is focusedon the critical issue of sustainablemobility, with obvious implications for the country and region, but also theglobal community.

3. In-House Platform

Participating ELIAS institutions arepursuing innovations that integrate socialinnovation, business innovation,institutional (or brand) identitytransformation, and leadership DNAtransformation (connecting to your authentic Self). This ELIAS effort isundertaken by participants in order toadvance core innovation principles in their own fields of practice. The goal is to

harness institutional energy and maintainthe push toward transformation inparticipants everyday efforts. This can beaccomplished, for example, by taking onboard an innovative project or throughshort workshops focused on the coreprinciples. While ELIAS fellows, as faculty

members, continue to enhance their learning as they teach presencingpractices, the impact of the course is

spread to other members of theorganization and the capacity of theorganization to use this knowledge andskills is enhanced. For in-houseworkshops and projects, ELIAS fellowscan draw on the ELIAS alumni network.

4. ELIAS Alumni

The global network of ELIAS fellowscontinues to build and implementprototypes, as well as to create space for innovation in their institutions based on

their greater capacity to sense the needsand aspirations of their communities.These leaders serve as coaches and asco-creators of an evolving innovationecology that serves our economic, social,and ecological well-being.

For further information, please contact:

C. Otto Scharmer MIT Sloan School of Management

Phone: (+1) 617-253-0486Email: scharmer@mit.edu

Dayna L. CunninghamMIT Ctr for Reflective Community PracticePhone: (+1) 646 327-3770Email: dayna@mit.edu

i For more information about presencing, see C. O.Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as It

Emerges (Cambridge, Mass.: Society for Organizational Learning, 2007). See also: P. Senge etal., Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in

People, Organizations and Society (NewYork, N.Y:Doubleday, 2005).