I watched the 2nd episode of ‘Guilty Minds’ on Prime Video.
It raised 2 key dilemmas or issues of this decade A. Impact of gaming on youth B. Effect of Bitcoin
Such games are getting into an addiction zone. It has equal or higher impact on a human’s brain than drugs. They show a young 19-year old boy committing murder under the name of a ‘challenge’ in a gaming scenario.
The challenge has reward money of 100,000 USD to be paid through Bitcoin – no account, no traceability. Parents or no one will not know anything.
Some questions: 1. Why are video game ads allowed when alcohol ads are banned? 2. The role of crypto currency as ‘hawala’ money? What is the purpose of its existence? What is the economic impact created by it?
Yesterday (March 26, 2022) was a historical and memorable occasion as we had the launch of HOCO Farming at Shiratoki.
Shiratoki is a village in the Zari Jamani region of Yavatmal district in Maharashtra. What made it truly memorable was that the 65 families in this remote village came together to make history. Forty farmers from the Kolam tribe broke silos and pooled 225 acres of land for Holistic Collective (HOCO) Farming.
I am proud to be a part of this fine example of Design Thinking in action. The first aspect was that they had broken the Rembrandt Silos by coming together. This requires all the farmers to have boundaryless thinking.
The second remarkable aspect was that they questioned assumptions. Thus far, they have practiced rain-fed agriculture that limited their produce to just a few crops a year. Average productivity resulting in meagre incomes had been the norm. This was now broken. They are now considering forty types of Kharif crops, Rabi and summer crops – all to be grown on the 225 acres of land with the direct involvement of 40 farmers.
This took dedicated and consistent effort by all the stakeholders. Gramin Samassya Mukti Trust, supported by Mission Samriddhi, was continuously supporting the seed that was collectively sown in conjunction with the farmers themselves. The seeds sprouted in two years. In the meanwhile, 18 farm ponds of 30m by 30m by 3m in size, many recharge pits, hundreds of meters of CCTs, farm bunds and dug wells are taking concrete shape, again with the direct involvement of the farmers.
Agriculture depends on effective water management. The tribal farmers saw the big picture (we call it L0) by mapping the terrain and then designing 18 water ponds of 100ft by 100ft by 10ft that are being dug using five JCBs. Bhartiya Jain Sangh supported in designing the excavation operation and loaning the JCBs. The design team has been meeting every week on Mondays with 10 experts to plan and execute the activities. I am happy to note that the government is playing an active role.
HOCO Farming! Holistic because it integrates Personal, Social, Economic, Ecological and Institutional Development (the 40 farmers have formed an FPO and selected a 10-member Board of Directors). And of course, Collective in its truest sense wherein all the stakeholders are coming together aligned to the purity in this purpose.
This launch is proof that going beyond limiting beliefs, collaboration, co-creation and innovation is the way forward. I am confident that this experiment will put Shiratoki village on the global map where people from different corners will come to visit, stay and understand the concepts of HOCO Farming.
During my student days, we used to hear stories about how the government procurement system was riddled with numerous challenges starting from the opaqueness of the whole system to counterproductive systemic requirements, there were some serious allegations of inconsistency involved in it as well. All these conversations inspired me to think of ways to harness technology to build transparency, rigour and efficiency in the whole process.
We at Intellect Design Arena Ltd got the opportunity to leverage technology to bring in the new wave of digital when we won the award for building technology and systems for a complete Procurement Portal – Government eMarketplace (GeM) for the Indian Government. This meant that we had to understand the finer nuances of the State Government and Central Government systems. It was a proud moment for me and my teams at Intellect for it was a huge task to live up to the expectations of integrating complex procurement systems run by various organizations under the Central and State Governments. A lot of systems were in practice but many were not documented. Today, our Honourable Prime Minister announced that Government e Marketplace (GeM) has achieved a milestone of 1 lakh crore orders through the Transparent Digital Platform in a single year. According to some reports, the government must have saved over 15% in cost (around 15,000 Cr) besides accelerating bidding and procurement.
Today, I feel pride and humility in equal parts in being able to make a small contribution towards making India better by working to improve the rigour of digital infrastructure in the country. I would like to thank my teams at Intellect Design Arena Ltd who have helped me in making my dream into reality. #GeM #gmv #procurement
Today, we are celebrating the 9th anniversary of the 8012 FinTech Design Center. Inaugurated on 23rd March 2013, it has always embodied the power of Design Thinking as the world’s first FinTech Design Center at Intellect Design Arena Ltd.
Personally, the 9-year long journey has been very rewarding. The Design Center has been a witness to my journey of applying Design Thinking from just product innovations to moving to applying it in deep process wiring, L&D, messaging, presentations, market strategies, UX and more.
During my Design Dialogues, as I try to resolve mystery to heuristics, I experience a shared ‘Moment of Aha!’ with my entire Design Dialogue team. This entire magic happens in the 8012 FinTech Design Center which gives us an innovative space to explore the power and vastness of our five minds. You can connect with Dr. Anbu Rathinavel to schedule a walkthrough of our 8012 FinTech Design Center.
Mission Samriddhi is building a collective farming of 300 acres by pooling in farmers of Shiratoki village, Yavatmal. The farmers were making less than 30,000 to 40,000 per acre.
MS design team consisting of 12 members with agriculture, water and social community experts, program managers, chartered accountants, terrain designers, market linkage experts and sustainable model designers have been working for the last 8 months on this project.
They need to design a capacity of 160 million litres of water storage for the next 2 crops. They are digging 18 ponds of 100 ft by 100 ft by 10 ft. All the large JCBs and large machines reached the site yesterday. There is a Bhoomi Pooja on 16th March at the site.
This kind of collective farming is getting designed among very few project heard.
The 2nd Law of Design Thinking says that one drives up to 3X value by travelling between 98 per cent to 100 per cent journey.
You may observe this phenomenon in nature.
1. A fruit takes 98 per cent to grow in size and ripening is just the last 2 per cent which brings the value to the fruit. 2. For a standard hotel room with all the basic amenities like bed, study table, attached bath the cost is 3 times in 5-star hotel vs. a 3-star hotel. 3. Feature differences between an Apple mobile is less than .5 per cent but commands 3 times the price than other smart phones. 4. It requires great observations, deep empathy and imagination to understand the design of the last 2%. For this I experimented with ‘No agenda’ meetings. These meetings are just open dialogue sessions for a longer duration with a minimum of 2 hours. 5. Another method to discover last 2% is a process of circle time with the engineers where ‘just listening’ provides an opportunity to unearth blind spots. Asking the right questions during circle time helps discover anti-patterns faster. 6. Then the journey of meticulous design and planning begins. It requires precision engineering with very high intensity to drive the last 2%. It requires fanatic zeal to drive outcome. 7. There are a few situations where we need to be ready to delete since the last 2% recommendation may require structural change. This is a very hard call to take. 8. During this journey of the last 2%, we must constantly evaluate against desirability, feasibility and viability circles. You have to apply your imagination and challenge the current belief systems to drive these.
I experienced the power of Design Thinking in capitalising global opportunities based on understanding the customer and applying the power of 5 minds – Imaginative Mind, Learning Mind, Doing Mind, Effective Mind and Influencing mind.
I am sharing my learning around Design Thinking through this 12-minute video.
1. 99+ per cent mass in animals and plants consist of just 4 elements – CHON – Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen. All beauty of nature is designed with these 4 elements. 2. Design of all species and their behaviour and characteristics are based on just 4 elements – Cytosine, Guanine, Adenine and Thymine (CGAT). 3. Apple with just 4 products – iPhone, iMac, iPad and AirPods generates over 365 billion$ of revenues. 4. Sometime we celebrate and link productivity with higher number of activities. 5. Sometime I measure my importance with number of meetings per week or number of mails I receive in my mail box. 6. For Design Thinking – ‘why’ is important before ‘what’? ‘Why’ brings clarity of purpose. 7. Once there is clarity of purpose, one can make a few choices using his wisdom. Making a few choices are the most difficult decisions in the life of an individual. 8. Japanese decluttering guru Marie Kondo’s Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up has revolutionised lives by the ‘Power of Deleting’ principle. This principle creates space for thinking and execution.
I call ‘Less is More,’ as the First Law of Design Thinking.
1. Thoughts are the starting point which helps drive us towards choosing the direction or dream or goal. 2. Thoughts are continuously coming to all of us at a very high speed. 3. When I wake up in the morning, I don’t control the origin of a particular thought. 4. The speed of thought varies during the days, weeks and various situations. Say it varies from 30 KM per hour to 100 KM per hour based on the situation. 5. The more the speed of the thought, the more energy is required thus faster blood flow and more glucose consumption. Continuous and fast speed of thoughts can put a strain on human organs from blood pumping, wear and tears to sugar management lines. 6. Meditation is the process to watch the speedometer of the speed of thoughts. Once you start watching the speed, the speed starts slowing down. 7. When we walk slowly then we can observe a lot of things around us, while driving in the car very few items are observable.
The slowness of thought speed makes us better listeners, observers and thus brings better empathy.
These are the prerequisites of good design thinking and better outcome.
A couple of weeks ago I catalogued 15 Educationalists and Teachers before 1200AD and encouraged my network to add more to the list.
I was overwhelmed with the responses I got and truly appreciate each one of you for taking the time to add to my list.
India is blessed with rich wisdom and knowledge since ancient times. It has a rich tradition of Intellectual heritage and its contribution has gone a long way to enhance the lifestyle of mankind. They are visible in the field of mathematics, arthashastra, formulae of medicine, vibrant art, literature and the list goes on.
Here is the list which is classified in 3 Groups (Group 1 – BC, Group 2 – 1 AD to 600 AD and Group 3 – 600 AD onwards) which is a testimony to us being blessed with rich wisdom and knowledge since ancient times.
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.
