Cloud 4 in the Spotlight: Innovation in Education: Improving Learning & Well-being

In the last decades, we have been experiencing over and over again that we are not very successful in resolving the global 21^st century problems. Albert Einstein was right: ‘we cannot resolve problems with the same thinking that created them’. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer – senior lecturer and action researchers at MIT - paraphrase this quote as ‘we cannot solve the current eco-system problems with the ego-system thinking that created them’. We need a wider range of competences than ever before to flourish and to co-create a world that we do want.

In their 2025-book, Scharmer and Kaufer state that for the necessary innovations in our economic and democratic systems, “we need a profound upgrade of our learning and leadership structures – our schools, colleges, and universities.”

To help facilitate this profound upgrade in education and inspired by Scharmer’s Theory U for leading transformational change from the emerging future, Cloud 4 was founded.

To get an idea of the kind of educational innovation Cloud 4 focusses on, we invite you to take a moment (6 minutes) and to watch the following video clip in which Otto Scharmer talks about transformational change in higher education. This clip is part of the MITx MOOC U-lab: Leading from the Emerging Future. We intend to participate in the 2026 edition of this MOOC with an enthusiastic group of Cloud 4 members who are interested in change in their own educational environments.

In the next posts we will share important elements of Theory U and the U-process, present our cloud activities for 2026 and invite you to be part of them.

Looking forward to meeting you!