In close cooperation with the Department of Strategy, Cyber & Smart Economy, the Department of System Thinking & Design focuses on Systemic Design and Systemic Innovation for future-oriented life concepts and technologies for a sustainable humanity. We work at the interface of natural science – humanities and social sciences – engineering and design.

A sound understanding of systems theory is the source for developing the ability to translate systems thinking into systems decision-making and design skills. These design competencies will be required in the future at the personal, group, organizational, regional, national and international levels and are already increasingly in demand today.

Systemic Design combines systems thinking and human-centered design to tackle complex design projects due to the increasing challenges of e.g. digitalization, globalization, migration and sustainability.

Systemic innovation intends to change the fundamental nature of society to achieve important transitions in environmental, social, and economic sustainability. We understand innovation systems as Emergent Nested Systems, parts of economic systems that are part of social systems, and these exist in a single planetary ecosystem. Collaboration is therefore required across organizational and national boundaries to change the social laws and norms that govern economic systems and, in mutual interaction, social-technical and ecological systems. Consequently, the department addresses not only design competencies at the organizational, process, service or product level, but also at the societal level, in policy and governance design that amplifies or minimizes risks but also opportunities to create a conducive environment for synergistic, multi-stakeholder and cross-sectoral multi-organizational innovation.

The aim is to:

• Further development and evolution of methods to cope with complex challenges for the so-called Next Economy
• Establishing an ongoing dialogue between international representatives and influential decision-makers from business and politics and experts from the fields of science and research.

Possible topics that are covered within this section are:

• Business Model Innovation and Social Innovation
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• Design of supply networks in public services (e.g. energy, water, traffic and public transport, information technologies and telecommunications, health care, and education infrastructures) and value networks in business services
• Urban Challenge and Urban Design (e.g. sustainable urbanism, smart cognitive cities)
• Circular Economy and Urban Mining
• Next Economy (Digital AND Sustainable Economy & the next generations of Business Eco-Systems)
• Innovation Eco-Systems
• Innovation Policies and Governance
• Modeling & Simulation