AIdea · Responsible AI in design thinking

Your process just became obsolete.
Your judgment didn’t.

Generative AI now does the middle of your method — the research sweeps, the clustering, the hundred first drafts. AIdea is the free European bootcamp series that trains what’s left: knowing when to lead AI, when to let it lead, and when to switch.

3 Tuesdays × 1 hourLive · 100% onlineFree — co-funded by Erasmus+
Choose your bootcamp →Info webinar · 13 Oct

Scroll — the argument takes three minutes ↓

The AIdea character: half exposed machine circuitry, half human, wearing colourful sneakersIntelligence — now abundantJudgment — still yours

Act 01 · The obsolete reality

The middle of your job is gone.

Desk research.20 minutes
Interview synthesis.One prompt
A hundred concepts.Before coffee
Personas. Journeys. Prototypes.Done. Done. Done.

AI just commoditised the production layer of design thinking — every deliverable that used to prove you did the work. What’s left is the part that was always the point:

Judgment.

Knowing what to ask. Knowing what’s true. Knowing what matters — and standing behind it. Intelligence became cheap. Judgment became priceless.

This isn’t a threat. It’s a promotion.

Act 02 · The jagged frontier

AI is superhuman. Until it isn’t.

The largest field experiment on AI and knowledge work — 758 BCG consultants, real tasks, real stakes — found a hidden line running through every job. Researchers called it the jagged frontier.

INSIDE THE FRONTIERAI LIFTS YOUOUTSIDEAI MISLEADS YOUSYNTHESISE 40 INTERVIEWSGENERATE 100 CONCEPTSDRAFT THE WORKSHOP PLANWEIGH MESSY EVIDENCECATCH THE CONFIDENT LIECALL THE RIGHT PROBLEMYOU ARE HERE
The line — 01/04

Every task sits somewhere.

Inside the frontier, AI is brilliant. Outside — often just one step away — it fails. Confidently. Fluently. Invisibly. And the boundary doesn’t follow difficulty: tasks that feel identical can sit on opposite sides.

Inside — 02/04

Inside, you’re unstoppable.

Consultants working with AI beat the control group on every measure — more tasks, faster, dramatically better. And it lifted everyone: the lowest performers gained the most, +43%.

Outside — 03/04

Outside, AI makes you worse.

On the task beyond the frontier, people who trusted AI were 19 points less likely to be right than colleagues using no AI at all. The tool didn’t warn them. It never does.

The skill — 04/04

Navigation is the skill.

The frontier is invisible, jagged, and it moves every month. No vendor will map it for you. Sensing where you stand — and switching modes when the ground changes — is trainable. That’s the bootcamp.

Inside
+12.2%

more tasks completed with AI

Inside
+25.1%

faster task completion

Inside
+40%

higher quality of results

Outside
−19 pts

less likely to reach the correct answer

Field experiment with 758 Boston Consulting Group consultants — Dell’Acqua, McFowland III, Mollick, Lifshitz, Kellogg, Rajendran, Krayer, Candelon & Lakhani, Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier, Harvard Business School / Organization Science (2026).

Act 03 · The modes

Know your mode.
Switch on purpose.

The winners of that experiment weren’t the heaviest AI users. They were centaurs and cyborgs — people who chose how to collaborate, task by task. AIdea trains three deliberate modes, and the judgment to switch between them mid-flow.

YOU · LEADTHE LINE OF DELEGATIONAI · ASSIST

Centaur

Human-led

You lead. AI assists.

A clean division of labour. You hold the problem, the people and the call; AI takes the work below the line — research sweeps, variations, first drafts, drudgery.

Best when
Stakes are high, the problem is fuzzy, or you’re near the edge of the frontier.
In practice
You frame the challenge and run the interviews. AI clusters 300 observations overnight. You re-cluster the ones it got wrong — because you were in the room.
Shared intelligence

Whatever the mode — the idea stays yours, and the human owns the outcome. Always.

Act 04 · The human edge

AI has answers.
You have taste.

Four things no model brings to the workshop — and every great design thinker does.

01 · The brief

AI can design anything — except the reason to design it.

Framing the problem is the first act of design, and it never leaves human hands. Tell the tool the wrong thing to want, and it will build it flawlessly.

“The brief is as much part of the design as the end result.” — Tim Brown, chair of IDEO
02 · Taste

A hundred options. Zero opinions.

A model will happily generate a hundred cups. It cannot tell you which one moves the culture forward. Deciding what’s good is — and stays — a human act.

“We are the arbiters of our own taste.” — Tim Brown, chair of IDEO
03 · Divergence

AI thinks in averages.

Models remix what the internet already believes. Real divergence lives at the edges — with people and perspectives no dataset has met. If AI is your only muse, your “wild” ideas are everyone’s wild ideas.

04 · Accountability

Someone has to stand behind the work.

Someone looks the user in the eye, signs the recommendation, and owns what happens next. No model volunteers for that job — and no user accepts one that does.

Stop building faster horseless carriages.

Most AI work just remakes yesterday, faster. The interesting work — the wasn’t-possible-before work — begins when a human with taste takes the wheel. That’s the work we train.

The bootcamps

Two bootcamps. One question.

Do you practice design thinking — or teach it? Both paths are live, online and free, co-funded by Erasmus+. Three Tuesdays. One hour each. Homework that ships.

Path 01 · Practice

The AI Bootcamp for Design Thinking

Use AI in your design thinking practice — without losing the plot.

Who it’s for
  • Facilitators & innovation coaches who run design processes
  • Students learning design thinking right now
  • Practitioners who feel their toolkit ageing in real time
Three live sessions
  • 01
    Map your frontierBring your own method. Find where AI lifts it, where it lies to you — and where you must not delegate.
  • 02
    Master the modesRun one live design challenge as centaur, cyborg and self-automator. Feel where each mode breaks.
  • 03
    Rebuild your practiceShip the AI-augmented version of your own workflow — human core intact, ready for Monday.
Cohorts
Nov 10 · 17 · 24 ’26 NextMar 9 · 16 · 23 ’27 Jun 8 · 15 · 22 ’27

Tuesdays · 16:00–17:00 CET (Brussels) · Live online · English

Register free →€0 — Erasmus+ co-funded.
Small cohorts, limited seats.
Path 02 · Teach

The AI Bootcamp for Design Thinking Educators

Teach design thinking so your students build skills with AI — not dependence on it.

Who it’s for — educators only
  • Teachers who bring design thinking into their classroom
  • Trainers & lecturers who teach the method to others
  • Curriculum designers rethinking assignments for the AI era
Three live sessions
  • 01
    Redefine masteryWhen AI can do the exercise, what must students still master? Set learning goals for the AI era.
  • 02
    Redesign the practiceTurn classic assignments into deliberate practice with AI in the loop — scaffolds, feedback and guardrails included.
  • 03
    Ship your toolkitLeave with classroom-ready, AI-enhanced teaching materials — and a European peer network that keeps them alive.
Cohorts
Mar 9 · 16 · 23 ’27 NextJun 8 · 15 · 22 ’27

Tuesdays · 16:00–17:00 CET (Brussels) · Live online · English

Register free →€0 — Erasmus+ co-funded.
Small cohorts, limited seats.
Live sessionsThree 60-minute sessions, taught live — not a video library.
Ship workMicro-projects between sessions you’ll actually use on Monday.
EU peersA European community of practitioners and educators.
CertificateProof of completion for your school, org or LinkedIn.
€0Free — co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the EU.

Fine print, answered.

Practice or teach — which bootcamp is mine?
If you run or apply design thinking — as a facilitator, innovator or student — take the practitioner bootcamp. If you teach the method to others, the educator bootcamp is built for you. Many educators do both: start with the practitioner cohort in November, then join an educator cohort in spring.
What does it cost?
Nothing. AIdea is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, so every seat is free. The only price is showing up — cohorts are small and seats are limited.
Do I need AI or technical experience?
No. Bring your design practice, or your classroom. Any mainstream AI assistant works — the bootcamp is deliberately tool-agnostic, because tools change monthly and judgment doesn’t.
What’s the time commitment?
Three live hours — one per week — plus a light micro-project between sessions, designed to run inside your actual work. You’ll have shipped something usable by the final Tuesday.
#ErasmusDays · Free info webinar

Meet AIdea first. Decide later.

One hour on the idea, the evidence and both bootcamps — your questions answered live, during the European #ErasmusDays.

Tue 13 Oct 202616:00–17:00 CETOnline · Free
Save my seat →

No commitment. Come curious, leave with the map — and first pick of the bootcamp seats.

The roadmap

What we’re building. In the open.

AIdea is a 24-month European cooperation. Everything we build ships open — free to use, adapt and teach with.

Dec 2025 Kickoff

Six partners, four countries, one shared frontier.

2026R1 Student Guide

Hands-on exercises for AI in design thinking practice — tested with real students.

Oct–Nov 2026 First cohort

Info webinar at #ErasmusDays, then the first practitioner bootcamp goes live.

2027R2 Teacher Toolkit + Educator Bootcamp

Deliberate-practice materials for AI-enhanced design teaching.

2027R3R4 Manifesto & Network

A public stance on responsible AI in design education — carried by an educator ambassador network across Europe.

Dec 2027R5 Video tutorials + open release

Everything published. Free forever.

The partnership

Six partners. Four countries. One frontier.

AIdea — Responsible use of AI in Design Thinking Practice and Teaching is an Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership in school education (KA220-SCH), running December 2025 through December 2027.

NLCoöperatie DOON

Innovation & learning cooperative at the crossroads of education, business and government.

Coordinator
NLAvans University of Applied Sciences

31,000-student university of applied sciences — Business Innovation programme.

BERHIZO

Network of eleven secondary schools in Kortrijk pioneering child-led design thinking.

NLMerletcollege

Comprehensive secondary school — vocational to gymnasium, Technasium and bilingual streams.

ROAllGrow Association

NGO for curriculum design, teacher training and inclusive youth development.

FROSENGO

Lifelong-learning and vocational training network — 32 centres across four French regions.

Partner institutions co-design every AIdea result and pilot it with real students, teachers and trainers before it ships.

Responsible use of AI in design thinking practice and teaching. Human judgment in the lead — always.

Erasmus+ KA220-SCH Cooperation Partnership · 2025–2027

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Co-funded by the European Union

Erasmus+ Programme. Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

© 2026 AIdea consortiumMade by humans — with AI exactly where it belongs.