Hyper Island Institute of Higher Education

For over 15 years Hyper Island has been designing learning experiences for students and industry professionals alike. It all started with three men, a few beers, and one vision. The year was 1994, and multimedia pioneers Lars Lundh, Jonathan Briggs, and David Erixon converged in bar in Stockholm to discuss an upcoming CD-ROM project.

Together they realized their new digital world demanded a new kind of learning: industry-based learning. They envisioned a new institution that could prepare people for the lightening-fast pace of the modern workplace. A place where students could grow, not only as professionals, but also as human beings.

In the start-up spirit of the times, they thought, why not build it themselves?

While visiting the island of Stumholmen, just off the coast of Karlskrona in southwestern Sweden, Lars stumbled upon a former military prison and decided it was the perfect unorthodox location to bring their vision to life. This new center for learning would value personal and professional development equally. It would inspire creativity and innovation by challenging students to practice experiential learning: to vigilantly question, reflect deeply, and ceaselessly explore different approaches to challenges large, small, and unimaginable.

They named it Hyper Island – “hyper” was a popular coding term – and its prison doors opened in 1996. The students studied in the cells.

Hyper Island is now a thriving global presence, with two main areas of focus. Student Programs immerse young talent in intensive learning experiences from digital art direction to e-Commerce to data strategy. Executive Programs boost understanding of how digital changes societies and consumer behavior -- and how organizations need to change to stay creative and competitive in an increasingly digitized world. Hyper Island is now worldwide, located in Stockholm, Karlskrona, New York, London, and soon, Singapore. And Executive Programs teams can travel around the world designing and executing learning experiences for Fortune 500 companies and start-ups alike.

As the digital world shifts and evolves, Hyper Island continues to react and expand, creating an agile, forward-looking learning environment for students and industry leaders. What began as a bold experiment on a windswept island has become a revolutionary way to learn, reflect, collaborate, and above all, innovate.