Otto Scharmer was born and raised near Hamburg, Germany, where his experiences on his family's farm significantly influenced his future work.

The principles of regenerative farming, as practiced by his father, laid the foundation for Scharmer's later concepts of social fields and systems change.

[6] Throughout his career, Scharmer has focused on cross-sector systems transformation, introducing the concept of presencing in his books Theory U (2007, 2nd edition 2016) and Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society (2004, co-authored with Peter Senge and others).

Scharmer co-founded the MITx u-lab, a platform that has engaged over 250,000 participants from 186 countries in transformational learning and change initiatives.

[13] He received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching at MIT (2015),[17] and the EU Leonardo Corporate Learning Award for the contributions of Theory U to the future of management (2016).