Hasso Plattner Institute aims to encourage interdisciplinary teamwork among European software engineers The Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering in Potsdam, Germany, will offer a new masters 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 co-founder 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. Software Development