by CIO Staff

SAP Cofounder Brings ‘Design Thinking’ College Course to Europe

News
Dec 19, 20062 mins
Mentoring

The Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering in Potsdam, Germany, will offer a new master’s degree for “design thinking” next year, according to the institute’s founder, Hasso Plattner.

The new program will be modeled after a similar course that Plattner helped launch and fund at the Institute of Design at California’s Stanford University, the SAP cofounder said Monday at Germany’s first-ever IT summit held at the institute.

The program will bring together students, faculty and corporate collaborators from diverse backgrounds, including engineering, business, the arts and philosophy, to tackle software design from a multitude of perspectives, Plattner said in prepared remarks.

A primary goal is to encourage interdisciplinary teamwork, something that Plattner believes is sorely lacking in the training of many German and European software engineers.

One of the pet peeves of the former SAP chief executive officer is that software engineers often pack products with far too many functions that no one needs, often because they’re too focused on engineering. His aim with the new program is to help students take a more creative, interdisciplinary and user-oriented approach to new product design.

-John Blau, IDG News Service (Dusseldorf Bureau)

Related Links:

  • SAP Keeping Close Eye on Open Source

  • German Gov’t OKs $1.6B in Grants to Spur IT Innovation

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