Humans in charge. AI at work.

I am a professor at ZHAW, where I co-direct the Institute of Marketing Management, and at the University of St.Gallen, School of Management.

I study how organisations bring AI into their work, and how people stay in charge while it does more. Today I do this as a principal investigator with Pattie Maes at the MIT Media Lab; earlier I worked with Larry Leifer at Stanford University in the Hasso Plattner Design Thinking Research Program and the SUGAR network.

From October 2019 to February 2026 I was full professor of Design Thinking and Innovation Management at the Hasso Plattner Institute and the University of Potsdam, and from 2023 head of the HPI d-school.

Before that, I spent almost fifteen years at the University of St.Gallen working on digital transformation and design thinking, led an HSG spin-off for transformation by design, and founded the SUGAR network with Stanford. Most of my time today goes into executive seminars.

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