The veteran technologist has been the Chairman of the .

The German billionaire鈥檚 office announced on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday evening that he was retiring from the position.

鈥淚t鈥檚 the end of an era: As the last remaining founder, Prof. Hasso Plattner is leaving the 麻豆原创 Supervisory Board on May 15,鈥� the stated.

It added, 鈥淔or over 50 years, he has shaped the company as a visionary, turning it into a world-class technology corporation.鈥�

Nigerian entrepreneur, Abiodun Abubakar, said, 鈥淚 would like to wish him well in his retirement, and I thank him as well for bringing us solutions that became game changers on our daily business.鈥�

His company uses .

Cynthia Njoroge from Kenya, described Plattner as a visionary whose business鈥� solutions have changed how to do business in Kenya, East Africa, African continent and beyond.

鈥淥ur businesses are thriving because of 麻豆原创 solutions, thanks to the big man. Well, it is time to say goodbye, and go well,鈥� she said.

Minenhle Khumalo, a South African-based entrepreneur, had wished to meet Plattner before the executive retired.

鈥淣evertheless, I take off my hat on Professor Plattner because his company 麻豆原创 touched so many entrepreneurs鈥� businesses throughout the African continent. May I take this opportunity to wish him well in his retirement,鈥� she said.

Khumalo鈥檚 mentioned breakthrough 麻豆原创 solutions such as Human Capital Management, 麻豆原创 S/4HANA Cloud, customer experience (CX) solutions and AI-enabled suite, among others.

Plattner set up 麻豆原创 with four other founders in 1972, before he stepped down as co-chief executive in 2003 at the age of 60.

He has since been serving as Chairman of the German company鈥檚 Supervisory Board and played an influential role in the company鈥檚 governance, orchestrating the hiring of co-CEOs Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein in 2019.

Plattner has reduced his stake in 麻豆原创 several times as of 2020, he owned a 5,89 percent stake, making him the company鈥檚 largest individual shareholder.

In 1998, Plattner founded the non-profit Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI).

He is Chair of Enterprise Platform and Integration Concepts and Professor of Enterprise Systems at HPI.

In 2005, he set up a venture capital fund, , with more than 鈧�25 million. By December 2009, HPV managed 鈧�150 million and had 17 companies in its portfolio, including online cruise portals Dreamlines.

An affiliate fund, HPV Africa in Cape Town, South Africa was founded in 2008, with 鈧�29 million, and soon invested in five companies.

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At its location at the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) at the V&A Waterfront precinct, the d-school has brought together diverse minds for workshops that offer training in design thinking tools and principles. These programmes for students include the four-day Design Thinking Week and the longer Foundation Programme in Design Thinking, spread across 12 weeks. The Open Course: Design Thinking in Practice is geared towards working professionals and tailor-made workshops are also offered to organisations seeking to become more agile.

Hasso Plattner, founder of the d-school as well as technology company 麻豆原创, had a vision to 鈥渦nleash hidden creative potentials and help focus on human needs鈥�. After establishing the d.school at Stanford University in the United States and another at the Hasso Plattner Institute (D-School) in Potsdam, Germany, Cape Town became the first Africa-based location where design thinking鈥檚 impact on the culture of work and education could be fostered.

鈥淒esign thinking, during its first years, was mostly seen as a user-centred way of helping organisations get a better picture of their customers and鈥攖hrough early, cheap prototyping鈥攕hortened the development cycles and made it more efficient,鈥� says Plattner. Since then, design thinking has been taken beyond boardrooms and into universities, the non-profit sector, and government departments. Plattner himself has invested funds in establishing schools to ensure design thinking is taught more broadly. 鈥淥ur schools encourage collaboration rather than individual competition. They train a network mode of thinking and working, they unleash hidden creative potential, and they help to

focus on human needs. 鈥淒esign thinking has the potential to change individuals, companies, organisations, and, with its radical democratic approach, even political structures.鈥�

Plattner believes the d-school at UCT can 鈥渂ecome a solution engine for some of the major social problems in South Africa, supporting companies and public organisations with their current challenges鈥�.

The d-school鈥檚 founding director, Richard Perez, officially opened the school鈥檚 doors in 2015. He explains that design thinking is not about learning a process, but rather about adopting a mindset. 鈥淲e are not trying to train people to become professional designers, but rather work with individuals that may not have followed a traditional design education and teach them how to approach and solve challenges within their field of expertise through the lens and mindset of a designer,鈥� says Perez. 鈥淒esign thinking exhibits a number of key attributes that include, but is not limited to, interdisciplinary collaboration; problem solving; tolerance of ambiguity and failure; user-centredness and involvement; creativity and innovation; and iteration and experimentation.鈥�

The d-school has offered design thinking workshops to students registered at various higher learning institutions across South Africa. It has also integrated design thinking into the curriculum in some UCT and GSB courses. 鈥淲e would like to see every student at the University of Cape Town exposed to design-led thinking. Its application is endless鈥攆rom solving engineering challenges to designing your own life,鈥� adds Perez. 鈥淲e live in an ever-increasing world of complexity, where challenges cannot be understood and solved by a single discipline or traditional analytical approaches anymore.

鈥淭he need to be able to innovate in the face of this complexity, and do so in multidisciplinary and multicultural teams, is not a skill that is taught in higher educational institutions. This is a critical skillset we will need for the future world of work and, at the d-school, we develop this within our students.鈥�

Perez says the d-school wants to create an African Centre of Excellence for Design-Led Thinking and be part of a leading design thinking network on the continent. The d-school has already worked in various African countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Morocco, and has partnered with an international non-governmental organisation in Malawi since 2016, adds Perez. This experience shows how local-led solutions can change the way donors design and implement programmes. It also offers insight into how African solutions need to include local contexts and input.

Through its work across the continent, the d-school has found that having people on the ground who are trying to find solutions in a local framework are integral to success while donor funding needs to be more human-centred and informed by the context of the environment.

In Morocco, it was meanwhile discovered that design thinking could be taught in any context, even when no furniture or creative studio setup was available. The most interesting aspect? Design thinking became a common language for people who had diverse languages and backgrounds.

While the d-school brought the process, tools, and technologies to help communities surface their own capabilities, people were also able to take ownership of solutions. Ultimately, the premise of design thinking then is in the value in the room and in the diversity of the people who come together.

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