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…
The Point of disapPOINTment With our high hopes, we do face the occasional disappointment. Not getting that promotion you worked so hard for. Having to postpone a holiday because of some reason, or difficulty in scheduling a meeting because someone’s too busy. How do you deal with such disappointments? Here’s something I have learnt that…
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…
Design the Future Hi! As some of you might already know, my book on design thinking, titled ‘Design the Future’ is out! Despite design thinking being several decades old, we are seeing increasing relevance in its application in our fast-paced lives today. I’ve read incredible books on the subject in the years I’ve been practicing…
Dr. John Virapen on the Greed of Pharmaceutical Companies Sometimes when you think about one particular country or another, and admire it for a great government, a transparent press, a robust healthcare ecosystem, and so on. Or when you believe the doctor when he tells you your child has an attention-deficit disorder, as he or…
The 106 Ladies at the Auto World Vintage Car Museum I was in Ahmedabad for a meeting earlier this year. Had to visit the Auto World Vintage Car Museum before getting back. With 106 cars there, it is a car-lover’s heaven. The cars are owned by Mumbai-resident Pranlal bhogilal Patel. A must-visit if you find…
Image: The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from the Ghostbusters movie, 1984 The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, Delayed Gratification and more In June this year, Jessica Calarco wrote a very interesting article around the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment from the 1960s, which were a number of studies conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel. Mischel was studying correlation between children who…
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…
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…
Don’t be Kupamanduka When someone just joins your organisation, get their first impression of their experience within a few days of joining. Then, after you run them through the standard tour and the paces, and get another view within a month or two. See if there is a significant drop in the ‘illusion’. And if…
Are you certain? Or do you think? We live in times that are almost entirely about confidence. The underlying stuff is often of little importance. A bold claim has great impact. The ability to pause to consider two equally strong but opposing possibilities, not as much. Maybe that is also why many of our management…
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…