A few days ago, I shared how one re-framed question unlocked a breakthrough solution for a pediatric hospital project, and opened up a contest for you to share YOUR transformational questions. I’ve been thinking about the questions sitting unasked in your minds. The ones that shifted a project’s direction. The ones that helped a struggling…
After an Uber or Ola ride, the app asks you to rate your driver. Simple enough. But when should that prompt appear? Ask too soon, and users hesitate. Some worry the driver might instantly receive a notification, drawing attention to them and the location they’ve just been dropped at. Ask too late, and memory of…
My “potato book” was feeling left out with all the posts and coupons for the two design thinking books. So here’s a coupon for Main Batata Hoon, a collection of short stories written in a conversational style, about the amusing and often counterintuitive ways our views, assumptions and behaviours shape both our personal lives and…
Good questions get us further, faster. And here’s a chance for you to win a signed hardcover of Think Like an Innovator! One of my favourite questions, and I mention this in the book, came when I hit a roadblock when working for a client, a leading Asian hospital looking to affordably improve paediatric patient…
I was getting a haircut earlier this week and got curious about the trimmer my barber (or hairdresser or hairstylist; unsure what they are called nowadays) was using on my head. It was an unusually quiet one. Turned out to be a Wahl. He couldn’t stop praising it. That opened up a longer conversation. He…
If you have watched Kung Fu Panda, do you remember the scene where Master Shifu is meditate? Or trying to, and his ear keeps twitching from some imperceptible disturbance he can sense some distance away? That is exactly how many of us feel when we try to focus on some important work. Of course our…
This story here has been a favourite for many years now, and I have probably sent it to hundreds of you around this time of the year, either as part of my work mailers or WhatsApp seasons’ greetings. What I love about it is how the illusion of miracles and magic gets taken from a…
My book, Think Like an Innovator, already available as an eBook on Kindle and as a paperback on Amazon sites worldwide, thanks to Notion Press is now also available in paperback and hardcover formats on Amazon India. I believe Amazon India charges a delivery fee in the initial weeks, so for now, you can use…
It’s easy to look at a finished book and forget the chaos it came from. Recently when rummaging through an old box of papers, I found this (top left, circular diagram thing). That was from one evening in early 2018 where I was working on the design thinking structure and flow for Design the Future,…
Design Thinking gets talked about a lot. But when I started using it in my innovation and growth strategy consulting practice around 2016, I noticed something: people knew the steps but didn’t quite it. So I went back to the basics. Looked at it with a beginner’s mindset. Overlapped multiple philosophies to see if could…
One of my favourite fictional characters is Poirot. In the 2023 film A Haunting in Venice, when explaining his method, he says: “When a crime has been committed, I can, by application of order and method and the slow extinguishing of my own soul, find without fail or doubt, whodunit.” The slow extinguishing of my…
📚 “Think Like an Innovator” is now available in PAPERBACK on major Amazon sites. It will be on Amazon India and Flipkart next week. A little hurdle to do with availability here. It’s being handled. As you know, the Kindle eBook is already available. Many of you asked for a physical copy. Here it is!…
Most of us don’t read enough. And those who do, often fall into a numbers game: how many books can I finish this year? In this mindset, re-reading an already finished book feels almost wasteful. Two thoughts on this. First, some stories are so elegantly simple that they invite re-reading and creative interpretation. Take Philip…