Lose Your Illusion Sometime last year, I had an interesting conversation with a friend’s girlfriend who is a psychologist. Between drawing inferences from my handwriting to discussing human behaviour in general. She also mentioned the acute dearth of mental health personnel in the country (India) at the moment. I did some reading around that. The…
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…
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…
The Non-Financial Side of Business A call with an industry colleague last week set in motion, thoughts on how we measure individual or business success. As a kid growing up in India in the 80’s, studies used to be quite a tricky part of life. Studying history, for instance. We had a ton of dates…
Why Design Thinking is Here to Stay A close friend recently shared this article titled ‘Why Design Thinking will fail’, written in 2013 by Jeffrey Tjendra. Jeffrey is a designer entrepreneur and strategist. Among some of us friends, there was were points of disagreement on the article. Jeffrey does seem to have a good understanding…
Number Fifty-Four… …The bike with a bamboo core! What does it take for innovation to be possible? Simply, just the intention. You need to want it badly enough to make it possible. I happened to see this online a long time ago. I am still in awe of it though. People in Ghana find themselves…
A Session on Innovation, Design Thinking & The Future of Work Earlier this week, I was invited to conduct a session around ‘Innovation, Design Thinking and the Future of Work’ at the Indian School of Management & Entrepreneurship, for a batch of about 170 grad students from Vaze College. The most enjoyable session I’ve had so…
Earlier this year, Tata Motors announced a new brand identity. ‘Connecting Aspirations’. Sounds good, but how well is the company truly connecting aspirations? For many years now, I have wondered why Tata Motors isn’t among the top 2 selling passenger cars in India. Despite being, what I believe, is a company and group that represents…
Can We Easily Spot Left-Brain and Right-Brain Thinkers? Just a thought. And I could be wrong. How can we easily spot a strong left-brain, or a right-brain thinker? In an argument/ discussion between two people with strong, opposing views – is it possible that those who tend to reply almost instantly each time, especially early…
An idea using a Design Thinking mindset, for Tesla’s Supercharging Wait Time Problem Tesla has really transformed the automobile industry, cracking the existing fuel industry and automotive heavyweight nexus. And this is despite the first versions of electric motor driven vehicles dating back to 1828! That’s when Hungarian Ányos Jedlik invented a type of electric…