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 Basic Track program, the Advanced Track program 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. 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 Academy, the Hasso Plattner Institute's education provider for professionals, helps to face these challanges 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. HPI Academy's offerings range from workshops in various aspects of Design Thinking, agile methods, and 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 the innovation strategies of design 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.