At our GDTA Spotlight session on December 14th, Prof. Dr. André Bresges, Executive Director of the Institute for Physics Didactics at the University of Cologne talked about “Teach to Start Up”.
Universities worldwide are shifting their focus on three pillars: Research, Teaching, and Community Service. Especially for public universities, it is important to show how scientific work gives back to the communities that support it. It acknowledges, furthermore, that universities foster growth and well-being for their surrounding communities.
How might a large university become more sensitive and develop insights into the needs of their surrounding community? Two structures within universities come into focus: Startup and teacher education centers. Both structures or agencies are completely separated by background, culture, and personnel. But both typically have an extended community network: Markets and market players, on the one hand, schools and families on the other. And both worlds can be connected by one idea: Design Thinking.
In his talk, he explained the Idea of Colognes’s “Teach to Start-Up!” approach and showed examples of how Design Thinking connects people of the same community, who may be worlds apart, in a structured process.
Prof. Dr. André Bresges studied Physics and Technology Education at University Duisburg, in the center of the “Ruhrgebiet” when it was threatened to become the “rust belt” of Germany. After his PhD, he made postdoctoral studies in neurosciences, where he studied brain activities of young drivers learning to drive a car, and mass behavior of drivers in a traffic jam. His fascination for the collaborative behavior of humans in unfamiliar and complex situations is the mainstay of his research, and explains his interest in Design Thinking as technique to navigate uncertainty.
In a discussion with GDTA president Prof. Uli Weinberg and other GDTA members, Linlin Shui, Head of the Design Thinking Innovation Center at the Communication University of China (CUC), shared impressions from China during the Covid-19 pandemic and explained how CUC build a prototype for an online Design Thinking course in only two weeks.
At the GDTA PowWow on April 30th, 2021 Claudio Dell’Era, Associate Professor in Design Strategy and Director of the Observatory “Design Thinking for Business” of the School of Management at Politecnico di Milano talked about “Transformations in Design Thinking: from Creative Ideating to Critical Reframing“.
Transform with Design presents examples of creative organizations across industries and geographies, and recounts the stories of how they adapted design thinking to build their innovation capabilities. Written by leading industry experts and design-thinking scholars, the book features ten anecdotal experiences by professionals who detail the implementation of design thinking as it unfolded for them. Contributors share how they navigated the many barriers and obstacles they encountered along the way and describe their experience from early beginnings to the present, revealing valuable lessons for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.
On June 27th, 2023 we welcomed Vindhya Umapathy, Design Thinking Lead at CMR University (Bangalore, India). She spoke on the topic of “Fostering Design Thinking Mindsets amongst University Students“.
Design Thinking has been reshaping the minds of many students and professionals globally for the past 20 years and is fast becoming the winning mindset that drives innovation and solutions to complex problems of our time. The mindset has seen major support from academia and professional networks with some great expansion over the years.
Martin Schwemmle: “Future Skills Navigator: Upskilling Humankind For a Better Future”
In our session held via zoom on March 10th. 2022, from 9:00 – 11:30 am (EST) / 3:00 – 5:30 pm (CET) via Zoom, we collaborated with the IEEE Standards Association and Vienna University of Economics and Businesss to talk about “Value-Based Engineering in Design Thinking”. For more information about the event, agenda and speakers please visit the GDTA Spotlight Special website. […]
At our GDTA Spotlight session on October 21th, Joann Halpern guided us through a “Designing Your Life” workshop, which has been adapted from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ book on this subject.
On Tuesday, May 21st we held a free interactive 60-minute session with Maria Stashenko & her team form Design Thinking Center Asia. After a brief introduction everyone played a round of their game live online:
Michael Lewrick, bestselling author of The Design Thinking Playbook and AI and Innovation, leads an inspiring session exploring how Artificial Intelligence is transforming Design Thinking practices worldwide.
Western University is a large, public university in Canada with 11 faculties and schools. Since 2013, they have slowly built up the presence of Design Thinking across the university.
At this GDTA session on June 15, 2021, Alejandro Rodriguez, Associate Director for Industrial Design Department at Tecnológico de Monterrey, and his team talked about “Education and Design Thinking: How Tecnológico de Monterrey is applying Design Thinking across all their campus, education and innovation.”
Remember the experiments and challenges you faced while starting a new project? Before 2019, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu didn’t dream a small idea would turn into so many new research projects, competitions to encourage students to innovate and the first D-School in Romania.
The GDTA Spotlight session on March 23rd, 2023 was about “Art thinking and design thinking in University College Cork: An innovation ‘marriage’ made in heaven.”
Adam Somlai-Fischer, Co-Founder of Prezi, shared how a personal challenge sparked a global storytelling revolution. Discover the magic of spatial visual storytelling, AI’s role in transforming presentations, and the impact of LLMs on visual thinking.
On April 30th, 2024 Prof. Jeanne Liedtka from University of Virginia shared the insight from her most recent book, The Experimentation Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide, co-authored with Natalie Foley, David Kester and Elziabeth Chen, published in February, 2024.