On January 24th, Arianit Kurti, associate professor and head of the informatics department at Linnaeus University, held a virtual seminar on design thinking for NOBALIS partners. The seminar discussed the integration of design thinking and interactive technologies as a means to address significant challenges in industry and society. The seminar focused on the practical application of an approach that combines human-centered design thinking with advanced interactive technologies and interdisciplinarity to provide solutions. While universities are good at basic research, their innovation is often not well-sustained and impactful. There are considerable differences in how the universities and corporations do and disseminate their research and the research in one often does not research the other. Prof. Kurti shared his wealth of experience in utilizing design thinking in practice in different projects related to digitalization, VR, big data, and practical solutions for companies.