DAVID COOPERRIDER is the Fairmount Minerals Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. Professor Cooperrider is past Chair of the National Academy of Management's OD Division and has lectured and taught at Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, Katholieke University in Belgium, MIT, University of Michigan, Cambridge and others.
David is founder and Chair of the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value. The centers core proposition is that sustainability is the business opportunity of the 21st century, indeed that every social and global issue of our day is an opportunity to ignite industry leading eco-innovation, social entrepreneurship, and new sources of value.
David has served as advisor to a wide variety of organizations including the Boeing Corporation, Fairmount Minerals, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, McKinsey, Parker, Sherwin Williams, Wal-Mart as well as American Red Cross, American Hospital Association, Cleveland Clinic, and World Vision. Most of the projects are inspired by the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) methodology for which Professor Cooperrider is best known.
His founding theoretical work in this area is creating a positive revolution in the leadership of change; it is helping institutions all over the world discover the power of the strength-based approaches to multi-stakeholder innovation and sustainable design. In June 2004 Cooperrider was asked by the United Nations to design and facilitate a historic, unprecedented Summit on global corporate citizenship, a meeting between Kofi Annan and 500 business leaders to “unite the strengths of markets with the authority of universal ideals to make globalization work for everyone.
Cooperrider's work is especially unique because of its ability to enable positive change, innovation, and sustainable design in systems of large and complex scale. Among his highest honors, David was invited to design a series of dialogues among 25 of the world's top religious leaders, started by His Holiness the Dalai Lama who said, seIf only the world's religious leaders could just know each other, the world will be a better place. Using AI, the group held meetings in Jerusalem and at the Carter Center with President Jimmy Carter.