"Liberating the Essence from the Burden of the Whole: A Renaissance in Lean Thinking". Presentation of Ivar Jacobson at the BPM Forum in Milan, introducing the concept of a “kernel” as the essence of the most things are built. The idea of a kernel has many practical applications in today’s business: 1) designing an agile business, 2) building products using agile techniques, 3) re-engineering your method or way of working. Proven in many practical situations, the kernel concept provides the ability to scale up the use of agile approaches whilst maintaining control & visibility. It is now being considered for adoption by standards bodies such as the Object Management Group to enable light weight, usable, agile approaches to knowledge management. While talking about re-engineering of methods Ivar will introduce Semat (Software Engineering Methods And Theory), a worldwide initiative to refound software engineering.