I am happy to share that our efforts to bring design thinking to the forefront of education have finally come to fruition! After 5 years of advocacy, SRM University will introduce a Design Thinking course for their 8000 students starting in July 2023. Our team was honoured to host college faculties, principals, and education department officials from 19 different countries at our Design Center.
Yesterday, I had the privilege of anchoring an interactive session on the importance of a design mindset in students and the power of the Five Minds to enhance their learning experience. The participants learned about leveraging design thinking as a pedagogical tool in their teaching and evaluation methods.
It was humbling to see individuals from 20 different nationalities come together and discuss the role of design thinking in shaping the development agenda and leadership skills of students. This visit is just the start of our mission to spread the philosophy of Design Thinking to the world.
Represented 19 countries are: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Kingdom of Eswatini (Formerly Swaziland), Maldives, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zambia.
Congratulations Dr. Anbu Rathinavel who patiently worked on this agenda.
99 plus percent mass in animals and plants consists of just 4 elements CHON – Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen. All beauty of nature is designed with 4 elements.
Design of all species and their behaviour and characteristics are based on just 4 elements Cytosine, Guanine, Adenine and Thymine (CGAT).
Apple with just 4 products – iPhone, iMac, iPad and Airpods generates over $ 365 billion in revenues.
Sometimes we celebrate and link productivity with a higher number of activities.
Sometimes I measure my importance with the number of meetings per week or the number of emails I receive in my mailbox.
For Design Thinking – ‘Why’ is important before ”what’? Why brings Clarity of Purpose.
Once there is a clarity of purpose, one can make a few Choices using his wisdom. Making few choices are most difficult decision in a life of an individual.
Japanese decluttering guru, Marie Kondo’s ‘Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up’ has revolutionised lives with the ‘Power of Deleting’ principle. This principle creates space for thinking and execution.
I call ‘Less is More’ as a First Law of Design Thinking.
Today is the 6th foundation day of Mission Samriddhi. There were more than 70 participants in the workshop who decided on the name for the ‘Purpose’ they are committing to. Finally, it has to go for voting and the name Mission Samriddhi was born.
During that time, Arup Kavan helped me design the ‘Open Architecture’ for Social Development after researching various models of sustainable and scalable social development, including the United Nations. Since we knew social development is Multidimensional and Multifactorial problem, we will need Design Thinking as a methodology for arriving at small successes. MS executive Council also took a ‘Conscious Pause’ in accelerating the projects for the first 3 years. We called this phase of Mission Samriddhi a student phase doing extensive research through experiential learning by spawning multiple projects. This pause has provided us with‘ silent spaces’ to listen to the extreme noises in very large systems of social development.
Early on, the purpose of the organisation got crystallised into just 3 words instead of long sentences – Celebrate, Connect and Catalyse. This simplification helped in such a wonderful alignment among hundreds of like-minded, highly expertise-based professionals.
Today we spent the ‘Agri Day out’ at HOCO farming by Mission Samriddhi and Intellect ESG at Shiratoki village.
A wonderful picnic and deep learning on agriculture from Professor Hemant Singh Chouhan.
Mystery on Companion crops, science of bacteria’s using multiple organic fertilisers and pesticides.
Zero chemical fertilisers and zero chemical pesticides. All organic material produced by tribals.
Typically it costs 10,000 rupees per acre of chemical fertilisers like urea and various pesticides. For 109 acres, the HOCO saved over 11 lacs of input costs.
We learnt that few companion plants acts as pest control to other plant because they attract specific birds which eats pests.
We were fortunate to get deep knowledge in natural farmin
Trust you all are having a nice and joyful festive season!
Recently, Manju and I attended the Non-Violent Economy Network (NVEN) event at Madurai. I was very intrigued by the narrative of Non-Violent Economy. How come the Economy which provides livelihood to us all becomes violent?The movement is led by Global leaders from many countries who are relooking at the economy from a sustainable lens.
The Sustainability of Human Existence is now anchored around Climate, Water, Energy Systems, Chemical free Agriculture practices, Forests and Consumption.The word Economy is for 138 Crs people of India and 750 Crs Global people not for a select few. In India alone, there are more than 90 cr people living in Rural India spread across 6 lakh villages.
The lowest structure of local governance is the elected Panchayat System consisting of 2.5 lakh Panchayats, governed by 11 to 17 members each. Now the question is what is their role in our Urban Economy?How do we calculate the contribution of each village in the traditional economy?Are we in a hurry to produce higher and higher by applying toxic chemical fertilisers and compromising on Sustainability in Non Violent way?
I interpreted ‘Nonviolence’ as non-violence at Thought, Speech and Action Levels by an individual or community. Non-Violence for sustainability is to respect Nature, Climate, Water, Forest and Agriculture. It is also about Fair Trade& profit and about right consumption.
In the last 6 yrs, I am enjoying working with self motivated Development Accelerators (called NGO’s) through Mission Samriddhi who are completely committed to Sustainability without even knowing the word ESG or Non-Violence. I got humbled when the Tribal community of Shiratoki, a small village of Yavatmal, Maharashtra came together to participate in Collective Farming by pooling their 150 acres of the land. We got the opportunity to apply Design Thinking to solve problems of Fragmented land holding, Water, Natural farming and single crop dependency along with 10 other compassionate experts. We call this experiment HOCO farming (Holistic and Collective Farming). I must thank each one of the experts who are putting their substantial time in designing this non-violent economic experiment.
When Manju & I were thinking about a Diwali gift this year, we felt we need to participate in this movement in a very small way by sharing products from Non-Violent economy to our friends and families. We picked up a few products from rural non-violent startups. The Handbag is sourced from YellowBag Foundation which helps women gain financial independence, Millet based sweets and savouries are from The Timbaktu Collective, a non-profit organisation that works towards the sustainable development of marginalised people across 285 villages in the drought-prone and ecologically challenged in Andhra Pradesh
This Diwali, we were happy to be part of the Non-Violent economy movement.
Today is the 6th foundation day of Mission Samriddhi. There were more than 70 participants in the workshop who decided on the name for the ‘Purpose’ they are committing to. Finally, it has to go for voting and the name Mission Samriddhi was born.
During that time, Arup Kavan helped me design the ‘Open Architecture’ for Social Development after researching various models of sustainable and scalable social development, including the United Nations. Since we knew social development is Multidimensional and Multifactorial problem, we will need Design Thinking as a methodology for arriving at small successes. MS executive Council also took a ‘Conscious Pause’ in accelerating the projects for the first 3 years. We called this phase of Mission Samriddhi a student phase doing extensive research through experiential learning by spawning multiple projects. This pause has provided us with‘ silent spaces’ to listen to the extreme noises in very large systems of social development.
Early on, the purpose of the organisation got crystallised into just 3 words instead of long sentences – Celebrate, Connect and Catalyse. This simplification helped in such a wonderful alignment among hundreds of like-minded, highly expertise-based professionals.
Last 0.1% is what makes to last 32 teams in World Cup football.
I am curious to know what are the elements which makes the team to get to World Cup level.
The 140 crore India does not even get entry into this world event. Yes I know we can take shelters under various umbrellas like A. India Football is overshadowed by Cricket or B. No one supports India Football or C. India does not have enough good players etc etc.
We have observed that most of the supports have pivoted around very niche place says Chennai for Chess or Tennis, Hyderabad for Badminton or Haryana for Wrestling and Boxing etc.
What are the Patterns of making India in World Cup in next 10 years
On 14th Oct, I had the opportunity to present India’s first Assistive Technology Start-Up Awards by AssisTech Foundation (ATF) in partnership with NASSCOM Foundation at IIT Madras Research Park (IITMRP) !
As a part of its 10X programme, IIT-Madras Research Park is betting big in the Assistive Technology (AT) space and intends to help create several start-ups in the coming years.
This initiative focuses on supporting & scaling indigenously built, affordable assistive technology products/solutions for India and the world to empower all Persons with Disability.
As a small step towards this direction, IITMRP organised a conference (13 th to 15 th October) a one-of-a-kind event bringing together the academia, industry and end users of Assistive Technologies,that is persons with disabilities. This conference was having 20+ presenters, 8 workshops and 80+ exhibits.
Many congratulations AssisTech Foundation IITMRP, AssisTech Foundation, Nasscom and all the winners of the first AssisTech Awards.
Hello, my name is Arun Jain. I am a design thinker living in Chennai, India. This is my blog, where I post my thoughts, technology trends and tips about the fintech world and many more.
