Open Space Technology is a facilitation method developed by Harrison Owen in the 1980s, designed for groups to self-organize around a topic that matters to them. Its main goal is to make space for emergence.
There is often an overarching theme, topic or question. There is also a time box. Within that frame, there is freedom. Anyone can host a session, conversations happen in parallel, and people are free to move between them. The principle is “Whoever comes are the right people. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.”
Open Space is about weaving and can help a group of people weave among them in unexpected ways. It allows for the full complexity of a system to come into view, unfiltered by hierarchy or over-structuring via a set program.
The idea is that relevance is felt by the system because people join and stay when they feel drawn to a topic. It’s relational because it often uses small groups, completely independent of their position in the organization, and often even outside of an organizational context.
When it works, Open Space gives us a glimpse of an organization’s unspoken intelligence. The conversations that didn’t fit on the agenda, the people who don’t usually speak, the issues that seem peripheral but are actually central.
My personal experience has been that with a loose context, conversations can easily be rather superficial. Yet, that slight erraticness can be a plus of course and increase the chances of serendipity.
Wiser organizations 