The innovation approach Design Thinking provides the mindset and methods to develop creative and innovative solutions for complex problems. It fosters an agile culture of learning and working that helps managing digital transformation. Multidisciplinary teams work in a flexible environment and apply an iterative process to develop human-centered products, services or business models.

The academic Design Thinking programs at the HPI School of Design Thinking are open for students and recent graduates from all disciplines and nationalities. The HPI d-school offers the introductory Foundations for Design Thinking, the advanced Design Thinking Studios, and the Global Design Thinking Workshop format twice a year. In all three programs, students work in small, multidisciplinary teams and are guided by an experienced team of Design Thinking coaches. The Wayfinder program complements the offering by applying design thinking for personal development and career. As part of the Design Thinking Studios, students learn to apply the design thinking method in projects with more complex problem backgrounds such as sustainability, climate change, digital health, open innovation, and many more. Every semester, they collaborate with project partners from NGOs, corporations, startups, universities or political institutions.

Digital transformation, ever-faster product cycles, and change processes are major challenges, but also the source of great opportunities for companies and employees. The HPI d-school – Professional Development, the Hasso Plattner Institute's education provider for professionals, helps to face these challenges and offers a world-class curriculum in design thinking, digital leadership, entrepreneurship, and IT. By applying practical teaching methods, enthusiasm and experience from countless innovation projects, our program managers equip clients for the challenges of our day. The HPI d-school – Professional Development’s offerings range from workshops in various aspects of design thinking, agile methods, digital transformation, accompanying innovation and change processes, and digital product development.

The HPI-MIT “Designing for Sustainability” Program engages multidisciplinary research teams to investigate both innovation in all its dimensions and different application contexts as well as computer science for designing sustainable digital solutions. In particular, researchers should develop ambitious, long-term explorations related to design innovation strategies to generate sustainable impact for society across various domains of practice.

The “Design Thinking and Innovation Research”  group is investigating methods and approaches on how the application of human-centered design (HCD) and Design Thinking is leading to sustainable business innovations in a corporate context. Special focus is on software-driven product, service and process innovations.

In the Hasso Plattner Design Thinking Research Program (HPDTRP) at Potsdam and Stanford, researchers investigated the impact of Design Thinking, how innovation teams work together or how to implement Design Thinking in an organizational context.