I recently came across an article about an initiative to create awareness about marine pollution. Some folks living close to a beach (can’t seem to find the beach’s location), created a giant, transparent fish. Made of mesh and barbed wire, it had a signboard which read, ‘Goby loves plastic, please feed him.’ It made for…
One of the fundamental ingredients of an impactful innovation or successful design thinking exercise, is empathy. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Often, in our enthusiasm to create something someone (a customer segment, employees, or even society), or to solve a problem for them, we tend to knowingly or unknowingly speed…
Ava and Dr. Jimmy Patell, dear friends of mine, were extremely kind to gift me a poem that they wrote about my book on design thinking, Design the Future. The poem itself is more priceless to me than the book. Really humbling. Here it is. Design the Future, what does it portend What does it…
A racist, I assume, has a more chronic condition of xenophobia, which is dislike of, or prejudice against people from other countries.Because a racist will dislike or prejudice against even fellow citizens of another race.Despite knowing this, the laws in some developed countries still use terms such as Black and White. Makes one wonder if they’re…
Upbringing Here’s a thought regarding upbringing. Views welcome; and especially so if you have kids and your parents either stay with you, or you visit each other often. You know how curious for information kids are. And parents often ask them to say or sing something they have learnt, in front of family or in…
The Reaction Buffer When you have a layer between the incident or the surrounding and your own thoughts and emotions, that is the space where you can evaluate your reaction to the external. You can evaluate, you can learn from your reactions, and choose a different way to react to the next instance of a…
The pros and “Cons” of Storytelling! Storytelling. Steve Jobs wasn’t the first to talk about, or practice it. Nor was he the first one to focus on the customer and build differentiation. Function and form. And he wasn’t the first to capture customer personalities, traits and passions in their marketing and communication, instead of just…
Gucci’s Packaging – Not so Gucci I recently conducted an interactive session on Design Thinking at a leading investment bank. It might be easy to assume that applications of design thinking at an investment bank are limited. It is quite the opposite though. And the applicable scope of design thinking just seems to grow bigger…
Airline Seats and Behaviour Do you think those extremely uncomfortable airline seats have anything to do with our behaviour when we are flying? Remember the last flight you took. Unless you were traveling business or first class, you can’t forget the tiny seats. And the armrests, that always seem to have gotten closer from the…
Need Ideas? Dress Down Despite the Mumbai heat, I don’t miss an opportunity to wear a suit. Especially to a first-time work meeting. However, things are different if the agenda of a meeting is problem solving or ideating. Then, I don’t just prefer, but also strongly recommend a casual dress code. Why? Think about the…