Prof. Hasso Plattner (born 1944) has been successfully linking business and science for decades. He is known for his achievement as co-founder of SAP AG - with its more than 60,000 employees worldwide – as well as his social commitment, both as exceptional as they are exemplary.  The recipient of numerous awards, Plattner has recently been honored in the U.S. by the Churchill Club with its 2012 Global Benefactor Award.

The Berlin native majored in communications engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and graduated with an advanced degree in engineering. In 1990, the University of Saarbrücken awarded Hasso Plattner an honorary doctorate. Four years later he was appointed honorary professor there for business information technology. The title of honorary senator was bestowed on Plattner by the University of Saarland in 1998. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees at Stanford University. Since 2002 Plattner has held an honorary doctorate from the University of Potsdam, where he was granted an honorary professorship in 2004.

Plattner sees Brandenburg’s state capital as “an ideal location for future-oriented research and teaching, not least because of the unique appeal of the Havelland region with its beautiful landscape and historic heritage.” The SAP co-founder and former Chairman of the Board made this statement upon announcing the founding of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Software Systems Engineering (HPI) in the summer of 1998. Not only has Plattner financed the HPI ever since, but he has also made a personal commitment as head of the research and teaching department, “Enterprise Platform and Integration Concepts”. His initiative has made a number of ground-breaking innovations possible. The most recent example is HPI’s research into in-memory data management that led to HANA, a product of the SAP software corporation. In 2012, this technology received both the German Innovation Award and the Berlin-Brandenburg Innovation Award.

The promotion of future-oriented research, innovation and entrepreneurship is particularly important to the dedicated patron and founder. In 2005, Plattner founded the HPI Research School at his Potsdam Institute. In the meantime, the interdisciplinary doctoral program has “branches” at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, at the Technion in Israel and at Nanjing University in China. 2010 saw the establishment of the top-level research facility: the HPI Future SOC Lab.

In 2007, Plattner expanded the Institute with the addition of an “HPI School of Design Thinking.“ Since then, students in advanced stages of their studies have been learning to develop innovative products and services in multidisciplinary teams. In the meantime, there is also a joint Design Thinking research program with Stanford University, one of the leading academic institutions in the United States. In 2005, Plattner donated funding for the establishment of a “Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Thinking” at Stanford University.

Also in 2005, Plattner increased his involvement in Potsdam by financing a business incubator and venture capital fund (“Hasso Plattner Ventures”) to support young entrepreneurs in the IT sector. Three years later, together with business partner MAN Ferrostaal, he founded the venture capital fund “Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa.” It operates out of Cape Town. In spring 2011, the SAP co-founder and its former Chairman of the Board announced the establishment of the first innovation center of the group in Potsdam. The SAP Innovation Center works closely with HPI.

In 2012, Plattner was responsible for a new social learning network that he launched at HPI, Potsdam. Via the Internet learning platform, www.openhpi.de, anyone in the world can participate in open, free online courses in information technology at the Hasso Plattner Institute.