Registration ends 07.4.2026 at 23:59 h

What does it take to turn societal challenges into entrepreneurial opportunities? This seminar explores how economic, social, and environmental disruptions can spark innovative ventures and problem-solving business models. Grounded in design thinking and entrepreneurial strategy, design thinking serves as the central methodological framework, guiding students from problem framing to ideation, prototyping, and iteration in a user-centered way. Students develop startup ideas from a “blank page” and iteratively refine them through user-centered methods, teamwork, and repeated venture pitching, where deliberately incomplete ideas are presented to receive continuous peer feedback.

The course integrates cases from key structural challenge areas in Germany – healthcare, energy, mobility, and education—each linked to specific innovation spaces, such as medical and data-driven health technologies, green technologies and energy networks, electric mobility and integrated transport services, and the university of the future. This is complemented by a “light bootcamp” with industry experts who introduce key structures, actors, and challenges in these sectors.

This input is introduced iteratively throughout the course, in line with the design thinking approach and in collaboration with a startup investor and technology innovation expert who has founded ventures, built incubators and accelerators within organizations, and held leadership roles in technology companies (including serving as Managing Director of Microsoft Germany). Students continuously adapt and refine their ideas by integrating feedback from experts and aligning their concepts with real-world constraints and opportunities, ultimately developing solutions toward market readiness while building strategic, analytical, and collaborative skills for innovation in contexts of societal transformation.

The course combines short theoretical inputs with highly interactive, application-focused sessions. After an initial introduction to key concepts in design thinking and entrepreneurial strategy, students work in teams to develop venture ideas addressing real-world challenges. Class time is primarily dedicated to short theoretical and methodological inputs combined with application-focused group work for ideation, prototyping, and iterative development, supported by structured peer feedback and discussion.

Throughout the course, teams progress through multiple development cycles, using repeated pitching formats as milestones to test and refine their ideas. These pitches are intentionally based on incomplete concepts to encourage early feedback and continuous iteration. The integration of external input is a core element: through the industry “light bootcamp” and ongoing engagement with practitioners, students incorporate insights on industry structures, key actors, and constraints directly into their concepts.

To deepen learning and connect theory with practice, teams are encouraged to conduct user interviews and test assumptions. The course culminates in a final pitch to a jury constituting external partners from the startup ecosystem and industry experts, providing a realistic setting to present and further develop their venture ideas. Active participation, openness to feedback, and collaborative engagement are essential throughout the course.

Further information on teaching evaluation: https://www.leuphana.de/en/teaching/quality-management/evaluation/course-evaluation.html