Finding a common ground – as a starting point for shared thinking, idea development, and collaboration – is a real challenge. This applies not only to teams, but everywhere where people come together and work on something together: in groups, citizens' initiatives, or organizations. It becomes particularly complex when information and perspectives – often enriched by the possibilities of artificial intelligence – are seemingly available in unlimited quantities. It's no wonder that, on the way to achieving a goal, it can be difficult to see the forest for the trees.
Precisely because this common ground – in Design Thinking, we refer to it as the “point of view” – so crucial, we are dedicating our first newsletter of 2026 to it. In the Design Thinking process, there is even a separate phase for this.
Dr. Andrea Rhinow, Program Lead Corporate Innovation, shares her thoughts on this topic. She has already dealt with this topic extensively in her doctoral thesis. We also spoke with students from our current “Foundations for Design Thinking” course about their insights on point of view and what they are taking away from it for their studies, whether in IT engineering or political and social sciences.
And we show you where you, as a professional, can develop specific skills to help teams find a common point of view – an essential step for productive collaboration – in our certification programs for Design Thinking.
As always, this newsletter also contains the latest insights from the world of the HPI d-school and the HPI.
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