The Spirit of Leadership ― Liberating the Leader in Each of Us

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. 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 Owen convened the First International Symposium on Organization Transformation and is the originator of Open Space Technology. He is the author of Spirit: Transformation and Development in Organization; Riding the Tiger; Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide; The Millennium Organization; and Tales from Open Space.