Students from Potsdam and leading global partner universities tackle design innovation challenges posed by global corporations. The course lead by Stanford University is focused on teaching students the innovation methods and processes required for designers, engineers, and project managers of the future.

Through the projects, students go through an intense and iterative process of need finding, ideation, and rapid prototyping to create and evaluate new concepts. Company involvement provides the reality check necessary for teams to improve their innovation abilities.

A professional coach, corporate liaisons and faculty advisors support the teams. Projects typically involve systems integration and include a mix of mechanical, electronic and software design. The results of all projects are real prototypes that have a user centric design, are economically viable and technically feasible.

For more information, visit the Stanford course web site for Mechanical Engineering 310.

Each team consists of 6-8 globally distributed students (3-4 students in Potsdam / 3-4 students at the global partner university) who are required to stay in frequent dialog and have one weekly meeting with their coaches and a status call with the corporate liaisons. Video conferencing systems and a dedicated project room are provided.

Usually two teams from Potsdam participate in the design challenge. The number of participants is limited by the team size. Selection is done based on applications.

We expect from attending students their full commitment to the team and allow two days a week for this course. Candidates should present with in-depth technical knowledge, be passionate about the task at hand and prepared to dedicate their creative energy to the team's success.

In return, students can expect an exceptional team experience and a thrilling design contest in a global and interdisciplinary setting. Upon the completion of the course, students have acquired the skills necessary to be global innovation leaders. Teams are provided with a fully equipped work place to meet and communicate with their peers, initiate creative ideas, and to develop prototypes. Students from Potsdam will travel to Stanford for a kick-off meeting to participate in an introductive "hands-on" design workshop (middle of October). A second trip to the respective partner university will take place towards the end of the course in June - to present results to other teams and companies. In between (February), the global partner students will come to Potsdam (rough timeline sketch). As a HPI student, you can earn 2x6 graded credit points.

In addition to an exceptional learning experience, participants get the chance to work with market-leading corporations.

At the end of each year, students present their solutions in booths at the EXPE Design Fair.

Students in earlier projects virtualized the car manual for Audi, and created a gesture-based magic wand for Siemens to control machines, robots, and production lines. Other teams worked on the issues of globally distributed knowledge work or invented a video conferencing solution that creates a feeling of collaborative data analysis that combines state-of-the-art in-memory database technology with an intuitive multi-touch interface. Project challenges varied from innovative electrical toothbrushes to full-scale airports of the future.