Open Space Technology: A User's Guide

This book, like all books, comes to an end, but that is by no means the end of the story of Open Space. In fact it is safe to say that we have barely begun. The total simplicity of Open Space (sit in a circle, create a bulletin board, open a marketplace, and go to work) contrasts radically with the quality of results and speed of achievement. The conventional theory and practice of meeting and organization would suggest that what happens in Open Space should not occur. But it does, not once but thousands of times in all parts of the world. So the continuing story of Open Space is all about this wonderful anomaly. Why does it work? How does it work? And perhaps most intriguing - if ''it'' works in Open Space (whatever ''it'' is) why couldn't it work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year? My best guess is that the ''it'' is the primal power of self-organization, and if so the real significance of Open Space has little to do with better meetings, and everything to do with a deepening understanding of who we really are and how we might most effectively get on in this world. But all of that is an unfolding story and, as I would see it, a wonderful, ongoing natural experiment. And you are invited to participate.

Harrison Owen is president of H.H. Owen and Company. His academic background and training centered on the nature and function of myth, ritual, and culture. In the mid-1960s, he left academe to work with a variety of organizations, including small West African villages, urban community organizations (both in the United States and in Africa), the Peace Corps, regional medical programs, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Veterans Administration. Along the way, he discovered that his study of myth, ritual, and culture had direct application to these social systems. In 1977, he created H.H. Owen and Company in order to explore the culture of organizations in transformation as a theorist and practicing consultant. Harrison convened the First International Symposium on Organization Transformation and is the originator of Open Space Technology. He is the author of Open Space Technology: The Users Guide; Spirit: Transformation and Development in Organization; Leadership Is; Riding the Tiger; The Millennium Organization; Tales from Open Space; and Expanding Our Now: The Story of Open Space Technology.