Expanding Our Now

The founder of Open Space Technology reveals the history and applications of OST, a revolutionary system for organizing meetings used around the world.

Open Space Technology (OST) is an effective, economical, fast, and easily repeatable strategy for organizing meetings of between five and one,zero participants. First developed in 1984, OST has now been used around the world with all types of organizations including corporations, community groups, government agencies, schools, and churches. OST produces better meetings and helps groups achieve such organizational goals as self-managed work groups, distributed leadership, and utilizing diversity quickly and without training.

In Expanding Our Now, OST creator Harrison Owen offers numerous examples to illustrate the evolution of OST and explores what it is, how it developed as a process for meeting management, and how and why it works all over the world, for groups of all sizes dealing with a vast range of issues. Owen shows how OST can move organizations to higher levels of performance, without elaborate training or professional facilitators.