The art and (strategic) advantage of seeing beyond what exists.

What the world needs most right now — is a little imagination.

Design, with its unbounded creativity and deep compassion, is humanity’s greatest evolutionary advantage. It makes us — the designers, innovators, dreamers — big and strong.

Imagine, if you will, a huge and happy white elephant. Not an ordinary one, but Airavata — celestial, majestic, born of cloud and light.

Like Airavata, we too are capable of great flight — powered by imagination. The human brain, after all, is the oldest simulation machine on Earth, eternally running “what if” scenarios. That is how creativity and innovation are born — not from algorithms, but from awe.

Today, creative technologies, including AI — are not the dreaded digital species they are made out to be, but the wind beneath our wings. They amplify our reach, accelerate our vision, and liberate our imagination. Taking us further, faster.

Imagination has always been the most vital survival tool of our species — our compass through complexity, our engine for renewal.

As this big, beautiful, winged white elephant, design has the power to lift entire ecosystems — carrying people, industries, and nations — across time, space, and dimension, into the next world we are yet to imagine.

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IMAGINATION PROPERTY

If intellectual property is creations of the mind, imagination property is the creation of bold and contagious ideas — ideas designed to spread.

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IMAGINATION DESIGN

Imagination Design is where we come together — with curiosity, courage, and intent, to see beyond what exists, and to shape what can be.

It’s where we reworld the world, with epistemic curiosity, courage, and creativity.

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INCUBATION

Every audacious idea begins as a spark — a question, a discomfort, a possibility. We nurture it with you, co-creating understanding and building shared purpose. Together, we observe the tectonic shifts of our time through a positive, humanistic lens, to design for the world we want to live in.

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ILLUMINATION

In an age of complexity, fire up the radar and light the way. We scan the near and distant signals, sense patterns, and surface insights that expand awareness and reveal opportunity. We illuminate futures worth striving for.

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IMPLEMENTATION

With Spread’s design systems, talent, tools, and frameworks, we partner with visionary founders, governments, and leaders — from thought to craft, from physical to digital, from strategy to story.

By fusing design, strategy, creative technologies, and film, we don’t just walk the talk, we make audacious ideas fly.

The team at Spread are proactive creators and if you are willing to challenge the status quo, we are ready and eager. To design the next businesses, brands and experiences, create shared value and fresh meaning.

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Airavata

In Hindu cosmology, Airavata is the divine elephant - born of light, with many trunks and tusks representing all directions. The king of elephants. The carrier of Indra - the god who governs weather and change. Airavata is strength, grace, and imagination in motion — a fitting metaphor for design itself.

#design #imagination #designsense

Spread Design and Innovation : Editor page

Design and industry — responsibility, impact and sustainability.

Exploring the role of design in transforming and driving sustainable transformation across industry and society.

Our three ‘prompts’ today to drive thought and action are

Responsibility / Building response-ability

Design as an ability that Industry has and builds to respond to not just markets but massive challenges facing humanity and planet today and tomorrow.

Impact / Reduce negative impact

Reduce negative impact first and make positive impact possible with ethical innovation. Developing and deploying new technologies and materials. Leveraging policies for greater transparency and accountability.

Sustainability / Focus on overall sustainability, circularity.

Use resource mindfully. Eliminate waste. Address resource scarcity.

I would like to add here a fourth prompt:

Regeneration / Have an ecosystems view.

Think with not just a systems view but a Regenerative ecosystems and economies view. Responsible for the entire life cycle of sustainable creation first before consumption.

Go beyond minimizing harm. Restore and enrich (regeneration). Humanity, Economy, Society, Planet.

Can we be the regeneration generation?

Those incidentally are Millet Spoons, a forgotten grain that the Karnataka Government worked to revive, to mitigate the problem of farmer suicide in a drought prone state of India. Which is today becoming a sustainable food solution for the world, with our / Indian Prime Minister anchoring the initiative, UN is supporting it. And demand is far exceeding supply.

It took 8 years to go from whats millet, to lets millet to planet millet. With a 15–20 bn market opportunity. So, it’s possible! To reframe the darkest problems as opportunity where agriculture, industry, humanity and the planet, all win!

We can’t reverse damage but we can reverse our ways of thinking. Integrating disciplines and technologies with design to not transform the resources of the most resourceful planet into refuse.

Is it possible for design to refuse to turn resource into refuse!

Design thinking as a framework that we take for granted has a glaring limitation within the idea of desirability.

Where individual bias conflicts with what is ideal for society. Environmental and social issues are neglected treated as acceptable externalities.

In recent years, there there has been an attempt to bring together design approaches with responsible innovation.

Reflective Framing x Anticipatory envisioning x Inclusive Co Creation x Responsive Prototyping

There is a glaring need for a reset in our thinking and new frameworks that drive strategic ecosystem thinking are a need of the hour.

Before we reboot and restart, it is best that we return to nature for inspiration.

“Design, if it is to be ecologically responsible and socially responsive, must be revolutionary and radical.” Victor Papanek

To find new ways of thinking, we need to look no beyond nature. And design as nature.

Everything is connected and converges over time and places. Creative destruction informs design.

The baya, birds brain is like a super optimised chip evolved for exactly what the bird needs to survive and thrive — remembering, adapting deep knowledge and specialisation in using Nature’s waste in weaving with beak and claw. We take the trees away and we break this system. Can a living ecosystem, truly be repaired once broken. The ego says yes, but if you think with your heart, the answer is obvious.

Dynamic, living and thriving ecosystems Destroy with grace x Preserve with intention x Create with awareness

Consider culture and / of design. From indigenous, eastern and western cultures, we can see how there is intergenerational continuity, sense of community, seventh generation, long path thinking. With Respect for each other and nature, comes resilience.

Return to wisdom. Long path thinking that we had as civilization is lost. We lost our path, lost our purpose and it’s time to return.

A continuum of time and culture - Wisdom of the past x Together in the present x Purposeful future

🌾 The Living Root Bridges of Meghalaya, India made from aerial roots of the Ficus elastica tree trained over decades by the Khasi and Jaintia people to form strong, flexible, and enduring natural bridges across rivers and gorges. Are radically regenerative, resilient, Self-growing, living infrastructures, growing and strengthening over time, Not built.

The Future of Design is better ways of thinking. Better craft. Better materials. Better systems. Towards Regeneration and not extraction. For better futures.

New technologies offer an opportunity to reboot, re act and redesign all systems for true efficacy, greater transparency.

With Individual Agency x Collective Dreams x Universal consciousness

With a goal of regeneration, as my friend Navi Radjou would suggest!

People - restoring individual health, livelihoods, community well-being

Places - rejuvenating local economies, physical infrastructure, and social capital

Planet - regenerating ecosystems, reducing emissions, and restoring natural resources

At India’s most popular tourist destination Goa / at the award winning Manohar International Airport, the experience that my team and I have designed, starts with the the drive, which designed to be reflective and sensorial. The massive Carpet of Joy is an installation by Subodh Kerkar with flowers made from thousands of plastic bottles left behind by tourists on the beaches. The airport experience is overall thought provoking, to make every tourist a better patron of the state.

We can and must deliberately make sense of ecologicial, economic, societal shifts continously, even as we translate authentic intent into creative impact. Responding sensitively while continuing to be sensational!

Design our own methods, tools, framework and path for strategic decision making for industry, governance and policy. To make better choices as producers and patrons.

We do need fresh ways of feeling, thinking and acting. Also measuring and improving.

The Design Sense path and lenses serve as realistic and higher order holistic framework at Spread Design and Innovation. To guide the creation of ventures, prohects, brands and experiences and ventures. For industry, governance and academia.

To self assess and evolve design while including all stakeholders in the process. To design big and spread bold ideas.

Design Sense Path / To act with purpose, from a place of authentic intent for sustained impact.

Design Sense / Lenses of seven senses combining science and arts to self regulate and improve continuously, as living systems - the design of new solutions, systems and enterprises.

Design Sense / Path to move from insights to imaginatively co creating shared dreams for holistic transformation.

As producers and patrons, can we reframe regeneration as the new luxury? Finding ways to collaborate, integrate, invent and innovate?

Renew our world!

Can we be wise and be better ancestors? Showing next generations how to Adapt, Survive and Thrive.

Maintaining ecosystem integrity, safeguarding diversity, nurturing systemic health, and strengthening the planetary life support system we depend upon! Human beings are perfectly capable of creating conditions conducive to life, of designing a better world.

It might take some crazy experimentation, that courageously challenges current systems. This for instance is the Earth Power Lodge, a power plant that uses waste to create energy and electricity. An isolated experiment by Michael Smith.

That uses ‘natural intelligence’ (not artificial) to make Biochar x Plant bio‑stimulants x Electricity x Purified water x And greenhouse-grown food under controlled conditions

We need to spread such ideas. Even as we frame this view of design. What would be called design that works like this? Is it Natural Design? Does it make a great compliment to Human and Artificial Intelligence?

Industrial Design evokes plumes of fumes and manufacturing mostly perfect things imperfectly. Human centered design is limiting. Responsible design possibly…?

We have to keep shifting our view to not self limit!

Ask yourself, what is the describing word that you want to put before design - to design a better world. With responsibility, impact and sustainability.

I will leave you to fill the blank creatively and think about it in your own way. Labels don’t mean a thing so long as the purpose is right.

My daughter said to me, ‘Ma why is it that as human beings, we discover and we destroy (according to her, this is actually a reflection from the movie MEG).’ It made me think, that after all we were ourselves designed by a good natured planet, hence can we ‘discover and design’ vs ‘discover and destroy’.

Invent. Innovate. Imagine. With responsibility, impact and sustainability! To discover and design a better world.

This is my humble wish for us 🌏 on World Industrial Design Day 2025.

Just maybe this is the right time, to introspect, challenge your assumptions, update your beliefs, roll up your sleeves and do something that you have perhaps never done before! With Design, Strategy, Innovation and your own Creativity!
Consider what it would be like to strengthen your superpower of creative anticipation. Done?­­­ Let’s get you to bring your entire attention to this moment.

Breathe in. Move your attention inwards. Connect with your life force. Breathe in right down till you make contact with the ground under your feet. Feel centred in your own creative capacity. Rooted and incredible.

Breathe out. Let go. Release and feel like you are one with the sky. Further out into the universe, in interstellar space, beyond the Karman line. You look down on our earth, it’s just a pale blue ball. Just like all the astronauts, you feel the overview effect, a cognitive shift in awareness and perspective, you see the whole with detachment and feel a sense of protectiveness.

Let’s stay here — this is the end of the year 2020, every day throws up ridiculous new challenges, every moment is new and old ways of thinking will not yield fresh answers. To explore and expand possibilities, you must first expand your mind. For this, it’s imperative to consciously zoom in and zoom out. Be centred in your creative core, and yet have an orbital perspective and prescience. Not so much to foresee but to imagine positive and possible scenarios in our collective future.

“There are no passengers on spaceship earth, we are all crew”.
Buckminster Fuller

Get set then, to dare! To take decisions in free fall, explore new risks and opportunities. To launch new probes in a vacuum. In inner and outer space. To overthrow your fear, exert your imagination muscle and be a creative actor.

The Vitruvian man, that connects human and nature, art and math shows us that within our head, hand and heart, we contain all of nature’s proportion, creation and magic, a divine proportion. We / You are a symbolic microcosm of the universe and the centre of it. And yet, your most momentous achievement is at best momentary.

“What humans are doing on the planet, then, unless we endure for millions to tens of millions of years, is extremely transient. In fact, there exists a better word in geology than epoch to describe our moment in the sun thus far: event”.

Yes, lets for now debunk the myth of the Anthropocene era where human action determines the planet’s fate or of the noosphere where scientific thought is a geological force (google the terms for some heady time pass). Let’s be in the here and now, with great humility, gathering wisdom from nature, distilling lessons from our rich legacy, learning from our past mistakes to jump forward constructively.

Within us, we all have an urge to jump that reaffirms the urge to live: it’s known as the high place phenomenon: the call of the void, or l’appel du vide!

­­­­­­­The idea of flight itself was born from the high place effect, a desire by human beings to fly, when watching birds in flight, to be quite literally, in a higher place. Roger Bacon considered an ornithopter in 1260, Leonardo Da Vinci observed birds and created a design for a flying machine in 1490. The first ornithopter flew with a rubber band and well - the human imagination muscle. Around 1894, Otto Lilienthal, an aviation pioneer, became famous in Germany for his widely publicised and successful glider flights. And look where we are today, to want to explore, take flight is the dream and reality of anyone and everyone on our planet!

Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will take you everywhere.

Is this capacity for flights of the imagination the privilege of a select few? Not really! Everybody dreams. Even in places and times of crisis, our dreams don’t die. If needs are endless and pull us down, dreams are infinite and propel us upwards.

Leaders, designers and even school students are urged to focus on empathy and yet those of us who are problem solvers are caught up with a very minuscule proportion of the world’s problems. There too, we focus on the needs of a select few - there are conditions determining how we look at the human condition!

Explore this https://designopendata.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/design-for-the-real-world-victor-papanek.pdf

#Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has long been debunked and it’s official that everyone has the right to dream, to focus on their future growth needs. As creative actors, the most important fact about empathy is that everyone dreams and when we shift our focus from needs to dreams, we can move teams, learners, communities, societies, nations forward!

We become like V unbeatable*; a subset of the superpower of dreaming is the habit of overcoming that can make us unbeatable! Unvanquishable by a virus or by other setbacks.

In 2010, I developed a tool to catch dreams and designed a system and project with co dreamers globally, to radically reframe design objectives and outcomes. To enable and empower everyone to dream, believe, realise.

The Dream:in Project and system around ethnography, open innovation, design research, appreciative enquiry, participatory design and several other knowledge systems and core next gen creative skills is adopted by universities worldwide, a global project, movement and community across 4 nations, a recognition of our city on a global innovation platform, recognised as a global gamechanger, adopted as a United Nations project in Curitiba and a feature in a seminal book on Creative Intelligence.

The dreamcatchers who travelled across India discovered a police officer in Haryana, #India who set up a wrestling academy to free young women of the fear of female foeticide, of the fear of losing their daughters. A young man in the favelas of Rio, Brazil pulled himself out after reaching a leadership position in a drug ring by becoming a muay thai instructor and reshaped the dreams of his community. When our dreamcatchers in Rio discovered him and recorded his dream, he proceeded to interview the children in his academy and when they told him that their dream was - to be him, it shook him and his eyes welled up!

The Dream:in Project team basically created a 3 step system

Dream : Train up in ethnography, design research and videography. Plan a journey to wake up people at all levels and catch dreams.

Believe : Absorb Dreams as qualitative and quantitative data. Understand shifts, synthesise futuristic themes. Create scenarios and shape possibilities.

Realise : Create systems and ecosystems to take forward concrete projects and plans.

The learning - that it’s possible and super important to create environments where we can imaginatively look into the future and create what we would like to see there. This is more relevant today, than it was before - to lead is to anticipate and create.

Which fundamentally is a design attitude and spirit. As design is our natural sense. Anyone can design.

Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. Herbert A Simon

To design is to act creatively and relentlessly from a place of authentic intent. To make the human experience better. That naturally means that our actions should not have negative consequences on the planet and the ecosystem that sustains us. That we integrate and invigorate the whole.

‘Design perception operates at three levels : visceral, behavioural, and reflective. The visceral level of design refers to the first impression of a design, both in terms of how the user perceives the product and how it makes the user feel. The behavioural level refers to the experience of the product in use. We often think of this level when we think of user experience. The reflective level refers to the user’s reflections about the product, both before, during, and after use. The three levels all combine to form the entire product experience.’ Don Norman

The field of design has only grown over the years, to go beyond artefact, to include design for understanding human behaviour, changing behaviour, the digital experience, the physical experience. That takes into account many stakeholders and starts to create ecosystems, considers and designs with and for technology. With ‘response-ability’. Truly complex but entirely possible. To reframe challenges as opportunity and navigate with agility to create the new. To decode shifts, expand possibilities and iterate the future.

Replace inertia with idea [innovation, design, entrepreneurship and the arts]! It’s time to do that now. Disrupt yourself, or then develop an idea on the side that responds to the now.

Design the frameworks to arrive at the idea, like training grounds or tracks to fast track teams from place A to Z in a disciplined manner, through more than one mode of thinking. Zoom in, zoom out. Here’s a framework that looks at design led innovation, to discover, create and amplify ideas. Developed at Spread to co — create new value along with its partners. Try it out!

This is a feel, think, do journey every step of the way!

Spread is a design and innovation partner and resource that navigates the future, generating and incubating new ideas, that result in non linear growth. Our forward thinking approach enables our clients to design, build and spread new ideas.

The design sense framework has a clear path and toolkit. And 7 lenses of 7 additional senses.

Being a changemaker, pathbreaker starts from a place of genuine intent. But how does it become so…

Only through conscious immersion do you feel the problem, begin to truly empathise by putting yourself in other’s shoes and understand their unconscious drivers. Be selfish, be greedy, take the time to immerse.

When you do immerse, you process situations consciously and unconsciously and get real insights. Insights are the aha moment when you understand the truth in any situation very clearly it becomes possible to reframe problems as opportunities.

For that, you need to think out of the box, connect the dots of technologies, narratives and human cultural and behavioural insights in new ways.

To imagine the new — journeys, services, products, experiences — shape new scenarios and expand possibilities.

Make a prototype, several prototypes — to find believers, iterate, iterate, iterate.

When something does not exist yet, it often becomes frustrating to try and get others to believe — so you shape a new dream, share it as a hashtag perhaps, give over the ownership to others so it becomes their dream, their possibility to make their life better. Inception or the beginning is when a whole new idea starts to spread.

When you start with the right intention (niyat), you get impact, thus respect (izzat). Then, it’s a system and framework you own and it’s a feat, you endlessly repeat 

Then, to make this a long term strategy, we have the lenses of 7 senses.

Human Sense: Understand aspirations and create opportunities. At all levels.

Nature Sense: Harness, renew, replenish, nurture natural resources for future generations to live as naturally as possible.

Data Sense: Reduce the cognitive load, synthesise and simplify.

Technology Sense: Catch, innovate and adopt technologies early.

Economic Sense: Make society as a whole far richer.

Aesthetic Sense: Nourish the soul with art — with beauty, simplicity and truth.

Evolutionary Sense: A higher state of humanism.

Design is our natural adaptive sense to systematically decode shifts, such that we can look into the future, expand possibilities and create new value, new meaning, new experiences.

It is a continuous endeavour and anybody given the right intent, mindset, tools and training can do it. The biggest opportunity of design is that it is open.

For two years, we worked as part of a consortium that included design researchers, designers, architects and most importantly the core team at MetroRio developing a blueprint for upgrading the Metro Rio service infrastructure in preparation of the upcoming international games in 2014 and 2016. Reimagining how Metro Rio should shift their focus from mass transportation to services and convenience in the urban mobility, consequently upgrading Metro Rio infrastructure and expanding their portfolio of products and service offerings.

Together, we did immersive research, that included literally tracing the journeys of users across the city and their usage of the 31 stations with each neighbourhood and community being altogether different.

Cariocas meander and merge fun and work, shopping and meeting, exercising and navigating and while the city is full of sunshine and joy, the stations were dark, dingy and old. That was our key insight and together we reimagined the systems that would repurpose existing facilities with minimum intervention for maximum impact.

In the process, we designed a toolkit for the team to design their stations progressively. With a taxonomy of essential services, with adaptable cuboids that used minimal power to light themselves up and allow Cariocas to mirror their onground stopovers/meandering underground.

Designing critical decisions collectively in a co design spirit.

I led a design team that designed a brand new business school brand and culture and were urged forward to design the student experience, thus the architecture, from the zones of experiences, right down to the graphics and even furniture. To reflect a culture of innovation, where instead of landscaping, we people scaped. Looked at neglected areas as performance zones to build confidence. A guard room as a showspace. To reimagine a business school. While daring to design what we have not before — an entire campus.

Spread took up the challenge collectively with a healthcare team, to design an integrated physical and digital experience, to reinvigorate its core hospital brand. And to bring a digital generation back to the physical, with some intelligent and some plain fun tricks. With dynamic digital displays, films that show development of the foetus along with chronological samples. A next gen museum and experience, right here in Bengaluru!

Designed a movement along with each and every employee of the Karnataka Agriculture Department. To take on the challenge of farmer suicides, with Millets, grown by the subsistence farmers, being reframed as next generation smart food. Besides the department, the farmers themselves were trained to negotiate, create and innovate.

When you choose to design your way out of things, you can take on seriously wicked problems.

What could be more wicked than the problem of open defecation — we are working with the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj around open defecation, waste practices and water management. That’s a whole other session, but here, we have involved the Swachhagrahis that were being remunerated in any case. To document success stories, inspire with good morning messages. Involved local painters to own over 6,000 walls and make the medium the message. And while the road to behaviour change has many hurdles of long embedded beliefs, it’s still possible to navigate complexity.

Given the sheer potentiality of design to enable us to collectively move progressively forward Spread and I felt it was imperative to create the Design Barn, a space to bridge the design gap, to generate and incubate new ideas. Two years ago, we set up a design centre to open up the space of design — let’s take you there.

Design Barn is an environment designed for everyone to learn create spread, design for total human success. An individual creative initiative, collective effort to challenge the status quo and generate value is the only way forward.

Given that, however, it all starts from a mind that’s free, that’s elastic - that can stretch and embrace wholes, regenerate eternally. In the last 120 days, we brought together a stellar global council, an education partner, tremendously creative trainers to design a program around design, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship / DICE. The inspiration from the branding to the design of the entire program is the stretchability of the humble rubber band and the human MIND.

Why DICE though - everyone needs and deserves to have the creativity of artists, the curiosity of innovators, tenacity of entrepreneurs and the idealism of designers.

It is widely believed that we must be T shaped people, with great depth and talent in one subject and curiosity and interest all around. While I couldn’t agree more, it might be meaningful to think of it in today’s context as that we must all be tree shaped people, with a growth mindset, constantly growing, while being deeply rooted, learning from nature and returning to our most human nature. Thinking like a forest, accepting that we have to consciously create, preserve and destroy our own ways of thinking. And understand that our future is an extension of our past and we have to look forwards while being mindful of our past as well.

Most importantly however, it’s not enough to just meet some performance metric. We can’t just perform in a time when we all have to dare. Everything has changed and will change even more. In such a dynamic scenario, survival and continuity are important but must walk alongside change. The challenge is dual and needs a different attitude.

To DARE is the design attitude that’s most relevant to the present moment!

Design

Act

React

Reboot your beliefs.

Rethink based on new insights.

Reframe challenges as opportunities.

Reimagine journeys, services, systems, environments and entire experiences.

Reshape fresh possibilities

Regenerate to a positive state

React swiftly and creatively.

Dare to have short sight and far sight.

As leaders, we can’t let gravity hold us down - we are in free fall all the time and yet we must be short sighted and very far sighted - getting things done in the everyday, while holding on keenly to a vision that we can create, that is meaningful and valuable.

The greatest human gift is that of Creative Anticipation!

Remember that you have it in you to dare, to design, act, react! All the best!

V Unbeatable or Vikas Unbeatable is an incredible dance group from the slums of Mumbai who went against all odds, danced secretly to win America’s got talent In February 2020

• Spread Design and Innovation
• #design #designstrategy #designsense #innovaton #impact

No fears, no anxieties, no wants and distractions, just a conscious knowledge and focus. On what makes you/me/any person unique and can set her/him free. Free to survive, strive and thrive!

Given enhanced levels of exposure and hence understanding, what do we expect next from those who provide for us? The Big Corporations who by giving us things for free or at a cost willingly or unwittingly shape the way we work and live, influence our systems, the very climate of our planet and the challenges and opportunities that our children will find themselves staring at tomorrow.

Shouldn’t we be thinking about how it would be great if they could open their minds eye to the dreams of the next generation. Become dreamcatchers!

If so, let’s get the children to show them how. It doesn’t need any fancy tech, just the openness and willingness to embrace your own imagination, a wee bit of patience, a great deal of curiosity, appreciative enquiry (for the jargon lovers) and a genuine interest in people, of all types, at all levels of society. Especially the young.

Agents of Change

This opportunity for the Spread team to work with 1480 students came to us fortuitously. As not too long ago, I had a brief conversation with Dr Tristha Ramamurthy, Founder Ekya Schools about her wanting to do something very different with the children across multiple schools. With the intention of helping them to get to know each other, be respectful and empathetic, feel a sense of belonging to one another (their class) and to the school. She also mentioned that their theme of the year for the schools is ‘Agents of Change’ and a core value is ‘Grit’.

Dr Tristha is the most brilliant, erudite and clear Leader I know in the Academic space. I do know that the children have or will have exposure to design thinking, interdisciplinary ways of working and service learning at her schools. Connecting the dots, and pushing the envelope, it felt like the best approach would be to train the children to become dreamcatchers* first, now before they can become agents of change tomorrow!

The daunting numbers ensured we planned meticulously — CMRPU (HRBR), 100 students per batch, 6 batches, CMRPU (ITPL), 100 students per batch, 3 batches, CMRNPS, 80 students per batch, 5 batches, Ekya ITPL, 80 students per batch, 3 batches. Grades involved — 11/12 or PU1 and PU2. Duration: 1 (prework) + 2 hours (camp). To be covered in two weeks, across Bengaluru.

Here’s what happened. In each school, we gave out one Dreamcathing Wheel and one DreamTag per student. While the tool has been tested across geographies, I further simplified it for independent usage by the children. My colleagues Raji and Vindhya helped align all the students and teachers to our exciting and mildly disruptive plan!

A personal Dream

As prework, each child had / has to spend 30 minutes unpeeling needs and wants, wishes and desires to get to the Dream. Of a future friend. (Tell me a better way to get to know someone! This is the best I know.)

The Dream is recorded on a Dream Tag, as short and sweet as a tweet!!!

The Dreamcamp is a session where the students form a circle and share personal dreams — of others, as dreamcatchers. And reflect for a moment on which of these dreams are big : inclusive, bigger : impactful, biggest : totally imaginative.

All dreams go up on the dreamtree, the metaphorical wish tree, where instead of tying a thread and asking for a mannat (wish), you tag your dream which as a hashtag also goes out into ether space via twitter. Tech helps speed up divine intervention I suppose J and hope.

A Shared Big Dream

They then organise themselves into circles and assume roles — as artist : writer : inventor : musician : poet. Having done that, the next step is to dream a big shared dream, for the school, the city or the planet. The Spread Team inspires them with examples and stories. The Big Shared Dream is also a hashtag/slogan, to be illustrated as DreamFlags that borrow heavily from eastern culture, from a meaning standpoint but have been designed to be created quickly and beautifully (stencils for neat typography, markers and glitters — doodles will do perfectly fine!) to serve as fluttering reminders through the school year.

At the end of two hours, the ascension of the Dreamcatchers is marked with a group picture of all the Dreamcatchers with their shared DreamFlags. We get poems, songs, friendships and a fierce will to creatively change the world. It all comes pouring out.

Dreamcatching has been recognised as the best and most qualitative and quantitative method to absorb and synthesise human data, to make a nucleus of dreams from where the universe can be created afresh. New business models, products and impact ventures can be created. Even songs and movements.

The children are now truly ready to be agents of change!

Wake up the sleeping ones!

The real question however is — are we as Entrepreneurs, Professionals, Design Researchers, Innovation and Design Leaders, even CIOs, CDOs, CTOs, CXOs ready to challenge our own assumptions and imagine the future? Should we, for a while stop reading all those reports. Instead, choose to be authentic, step away from that tiny circle of light into the dark street. Where fears and anxieties are being stoked … it’s possible to quell the fires, wake up the sleeping, shake up the soil and plant dreams instead.

The boys in the slums and favelas want to know that it’s possible for them to not be invisible people, that they can dream of being creative, successful and most importantly respected and secure — them, their family and their siblings. They want to make their own music and their own money. Not too big a dream, really. Housewives want to be told that they can dream of a different future, where they are the ones in control of a business, of their household without a whole lot of complexity. Whatsapp wasn’t conceived of, to do this — but in some instances, it does allow the user to enable trade, connections and ease of business. One man dreamt of clean beaches where the turtles return and he didn’t require a lot to make it happen. But we can collectively surely design systems for him to sustain and scale the impact.

When you travel, you want to make new connections, have life changing experiences and be blown away. You don’t want to app jump and have all the anxiety that comes with travel. Download Stayology that allows you to Just Go! We incubate such blue sky, disruptive, creative and mind bending ideas at where else, the Design Barn that’s dedicated to emergence — of new skills, ideas, businesses; that’s not too far from the Design Farm. Where we are immersed in large behavioural and perception change projects, led by a transdisciplinary team — which just means that we create new knowledge, tools and methods between design disciplines to address fresh challenges.

Mine the Dark Human Data

What if you sent away your brightest, most optimistic and enthused minds to cross over to the dark and exciting side, explore outside the lines. To understand the individual and collective aspirations of a whole new set of people out there. Give them the tools and training to go to a place that is deeper, make a whole new map, look into souls and hold up a mirror to the future. Take the time to decode the data, see the patterns. Change the way they look at people and possibilities. Forever.

Harvest Dreams

Design Thinking experts suggest that teams of trained and untrained designers must empathise and understand people‘s needs. Agreed! Dreamcatching, however is a way to shift the focus from needs to dreams, from small joys to long term happiness. From consumption, to creation. I cannot emphasise this enough. Don’t make products smaller for them, make their aspirations bigger! Why should you make your money now and think of giving it away tomorrow. No one needs your charity, they need your understanding and partnership. Real change happens not from the top, bit from within. ‘Dream and Design Driven Innovation’ is when new technology, people and imagination come together to radically and creatively transform our lives and our planet forever.

When you gather dreams, you see new patterns emerge, from where new action plans can be created.

Incubate Dreams

Wouldn’t it be incredible to incubate these new ideas, models, systems, paradigms that emerge from the Dreams of people. We call this Dreamscaping and it’s really a combination of the film making process and design systems thinking. That enables a fearless leap into a space of totally vivid possibilities. Design and Technology play a huge role in constructing a whole new reality and what starts from design research leads into design craft. Where a new argument and picture is presented with great clarity and integrity.

Even before it is a Business Plan, it is a clear picture of the possible stakeholders and creative action that is possible. The outcome could be a product, a movement, a campaign, a whole new experience, system or even policy. That is itching to be prototyped in the fastest and simplest ways. Along with a set of stakeholders who can be your open innovation partners.

Would you agree that we could Design for Dreams and that we should Believe that we must create fresh new paradigms and systems, challenge the status quo!

If so, Take a leap of imagination, Take a side step and dream with us!

* “As a design strategist and designer working on massive strategic and transformational projects in India and emerging markets, I questioned where design should start from. My hypothesis — the dreams of everyone; an inside out vs a top down approach to design enquiry, if we are desirous of creating more equal futures and a dynamic society. The Dream:in Project was designed as a practical exploration between academia and practice. The project has been adapted at Universities across India, Brazil and China. It has stirred up something in imagineers everywhere and, found believers globally. It has been recognised as a gamechanger. In the age of machines, our imagination is the greatest resource we have as human beings, a way to move us forward, to create the reality that WE want. Zoom backwards and examine the blossoming of our relationship with the internet, as it built trust and a sense of connectedness and belonging. And acquired power over what we see, buy, think and … feel. Zoom forward and see how a progressive medium is being exploited by regressive forces. To stoke our fears, create anxiety and manipulate our feelings,

thoughts and actions. At the scale of communities, states and nations. As designers and technologists, as creators of new value and meaning around people and their dreams, we need to have our own response to the negative use of technology and human imagination. How might we shed our inhibitions, get out of our comfort ones and create the systems to dream, believe and realise; a safe place to dream, a dream incubator if you will? How might we, as a society collectively wake up and start dreaming?!! I am more than happy to share the principles, insights and the recipe, to design with inclusion, impact and imagination at the core. Gleaned from practical experience and from the Dream:in Project. It has to start from us. There is nothing more dangerous for humanity than the death of dreams. So, let’s wake up and start dreaming.”

The tools and methodologies used for this workshop have been tested globally at design and innovation centres of learning and practice. A little over 10,000 dreams have been recorded as Dream tags and videos. Dreamcatching is fundamentally a positive probe and a way to record and analyse positive and futuristic qualitative and quantitative human data.

Dreamcatcher, Dreamcatcher’s Camp, DreamWheel, DreamTag, DreamTree, Dream Scape, DreamFlag are the intellectual property of the Dream:in Project, developed by Sonia Manchanda, Founding Partner, Spread Design and Consulting

Dreamcatching! was originally published in Spread Design and Innovation on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Stephen is fortunate to travel around the world with this parents. When he’s back home in Bangalore, he dreams about mixing up the ‘foreign tastes’ with his familiar home tastes…in rather unusual ways! He dreams about frog curry, fish bhajji, beef pakoda… you get the drift.

Stephen is a 12 year old who is the volunteer ‘dreamer’ in his team at Spread’s ‘Design your dream’ camp. The ‘Designers’ in his team are 8 to 11 years old. They understood his food needs, wishes and his dream. They then went on to generate a large number of ideas, really really bad ones and good ones. They became incredibly excited when they imagined a machine that is an FTM/ Food Transformation Machine. Stephen pitched in as well and together they started putting together the contours of their unique idea…To enable ‘bizzare breaks’ in Stephen’s food routine, the FTM would allow access visually to a world map on its screen; and would have a search bar, to choose and combine destinations, satisfied with his exploration, when he hits enter — Pop! His 3D printed food surprise would come out of the slot! The first time the ‘Bizarre Breaks’ FTM was tested, the package revealed a Fishji or Fish bhajji.

Another dreamer, on a more serious note, dreams of eating healthy and tasty organic junk (yes, junk) food. His designers created an app for him for ordering and making organic junk food; depending on his mood and situation. It was called ‘organicoz’, as its for a truly good cause.

In our country, we have an innate wisdom and conditioning around food. With the invasion and influence of Western and world, packaged and attractive food, we risk an erosion of that sense.

This realisation prompted the team at Spread and me to make ‘food sense’: ‘How will we grow, eat and sustain ourselves in the future’ our theme; in our camp for 10–17 year olds.

The food we cooked for them was the biggest showstopper. Being mamas ourselves, it gave us such joy to make for them — penne pasta with basil grown at our farm; coconut ice cream with coconut from the farm and more; the pasta sauce and the fruits (love apples, startfruit, lychees, mangoes — also became tools for making teams) gave them great delight. It became (a carefully designed) game to take their tummies, bodies and minds back to the design farm and identity what had gone into their plate. It also helped to keep their interest alive and not have them fall asleep after their big lunch!

Before I share more insights, for readers who crave structure, here’s the path that the workshop took

A. Greet. Meet. Eat

Choose to be a fruit and make your team mascot; a ‘fruity superhero’.

B. Devour Design

Tapping into the tacit knowledge of design that the children collectively have and helping them connect the dots. To understand the design process, discipline and values. In an engaged and inspired session!

C. Nutrition and Hygiene

Talk and Demo by a professional chef — stuff that every young foodie needs to know and will accept it ONLY when it comes from an expert (mothers who have gone hoarse repeating the obvious will relate to this).

D. Dream a food dream

Identify a Dreamer in each team and deeply understand her/his food dream. Whats in their imagination that goes beyond what they need, what their parents and they wish for … its just … a dream!!!

To provoke and catalyse; we curated videos, related to food awareness, especially those involving the said age group and found appropriate times to share them.

E. Ideascaping

‘Lying on the grass’ and letting the ideas flow, choosing the most inspiring one to make an ideascape (articulation and sketch) a prototype and a fresh new argument. The protyping was the most challenging bit as there were none of the DIY videos that this generation loves to check out. They had to make their own shopping list, get the materials and make the prototypes, guided of course by responsible design experts. The decisions were all theirs!

The children were nudged along by us to organise themselves, to express what they had learnt and to make a thorough and exciting presentation to an audience of parents and others.

It really was no surprise to us that the levels of awareness in the children was very high. However, knowledge is useless, unless and until it becomes the basis for creative action. Toss in imagination, an infinite and amazing ingredient; and you have a recipe for creating amazing new possibilities. With all the new technologies and easy materials, whole new ideas can be created and even prototyped.

The camp became a fresh start for the young participants to apply their creativity, to discover their inner designer; to realise that they have the capacity for understanding, for reflection; for harvesting their own potential.

On the second day; the children made their own lunch, balancing healthy with tasty and enjoying that which is clean, simple and nutritious. Given their direct involvement with the food; they surprised us and themselves with how much they could actually create and consume.

They learnt ethnography, design thinking, prototyping and discovered and opportunity to create without being judged, making friends while working in mixed age teams — a whole new paradigm in learning!

The feedback was straight from the heart. Sharing here:

I found this workshop beneficial as it really helped me understand what design is all about. The concept was not only explained through theory, we correlated it with food — practically, and our end result was an actual product. My favorite part of the workshop was that there was no right or wrong way of doing anything and all ideas were encouraged. This experience definitely encouraged me to observe and brainstorm. I am thankful to SPREAD for holding this exciting programme :) Khushi Duggal, 15 Yrs, Grade 10, Greenwood High School

Khushi was very positive for the second day…I spent some time synthesising what she learnt in the feel think do framework…we extended her team’s project into a startup and what else she would need to take care of…you guys really took care of the kids. Samir Duggal, Founder, Kwik 24

The 2 days program held in Design Barn about design was an eye opening and interesting program. We learnt about many things in details which we did not learn before. This program was really helpful, it was great to have designers teaching us about empathy, connecting the dots, the problems we face and bringing out solutions. Niharieka R Andrews, 9th grade, National Centre for Excellence

It was a very good program to inculcate entrepreneur skills at very early stage, to identify problems and proper problem solution. Ravi Andrews, Strategic Advisor & Investor

‘The Design Barn workshop was really fun. In a short span of two days, I learnt a lot about design and all the work that goes behind developing a product. I made a lot of new friends and ate some delicious food! I now have a better idea about what it takes to be a designer, something that I’m keen to pursue.” Karma Krishna Sharan, 12 yrs, Grade 7, Bangalore International School

The Design your Dream camp was a great starting point for my daughter as an introduction to the fascinating world of design. Design is all around us, in everything we use, see, wear or imagine. Design creates the functional and the beautiful, and exists in all forms- from asymmetric to disruptive:)

Kudos to the team for coming up with something so pertinent for the times we live in, specially for a generation that will need it more than ever. Can’t wait to see what other exciting programs unfold! All the very best. Swati Krishna Sharan, Freelance, Creative Director

I feel like the summer camp is fun of course. And i got to make new friends.The idea of organic food is very interesting and the way you explain it to us kiddos’ is super fun plus being the DREAMER was fun and very interesting because i’ve never done this and i’m willing to try some of the stuff and the fact that the food you provided to us was from the farm…i’m impressed but the coconut ice cream tho MHHHHHHH it was tasty and had a spunk of the coconut and all that.I also loved the cake it too was AMAZING. Aryan Vinil, 12 yrs, Grade 7, Buddhi School

We are putting out a new program to compliment what children learn in school, it’s called Dream School. Visualization world that they will grow up into; (Our average age was 12, so think 2024), all the reactive functional, intelligent work will be done by machines. Will humans then be somnambulists (zombies; if that explains it better for you) or can they be dreamers, still working towards making the world a better place while being critical and creative; self aware and curious optimistic and empowered, connected and yet a little along, reaching for better possibilities, shaping their future and the destinies, your planets and that of future generation.

It starts on 12th May 2018, at our new facility Spread Design Barn.

Give your young dreamer the unique opportunity to be a creator and designer. Register for the Dream School Program here: https://goo.gl/forms/makgV2wLSqFx0ghE3

We are happy to share and collaborate, do get in touch with your own ideas and more.

#dreamschool #designbarn #spread #designthinking #foodsense

Design your Dream! was originally published in Spread Design and Innovation on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A story doing the rounds is that of Sundar Pichai’s response in a letter to a seven year old girl in which he said — If you keep working hard and follow your dream, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.

This little girl had a dream and she was really very clear about it! But how do you find your dream — your gift, your purpose? How many people know what their dream is and how can you help someone else find theirs? Can we take away fears, to wake people up to the possibilities within them, imaginatively! This is the highest form of design thinking, of empathy and creativity. This is what comes after Nudge Theory and the manipulation of people for economic reasons; as it uses design thinking, ethnography and behavioral science for leaders to better understand people’s hopes and aspirations. While enabling long term decision making and an inside out discovery of life purpose.

A dream is a projection of a desired future. It is also qualitative human data. When you have many dreams — it is an imagination soup! And when you churn this data that is both qualitative and quantitative and start to analyse this, you start to see where our world is headed.

The human imagination can beat machine intelligence hollow. Dreams, my friend, have no limits! The dreams of children are pure and bold and as people grow and face challenges, we run the risk of the death of dreams. It is therefore a wonderful thing that the Chief Minister of my home state is desirous of nurturing the dreams of a million kids. I will be reaching out to him and letting him know that there is a globally acknowledged and well tested method to catch, understand, analyse dreams, an open innovation system to shape ideas that allow us to collectively dream, believe and realize. For the same amount that was spent for letting the people know that you believe in dreams (upwards of USD 100,000 would have been spent in one day — just today, on advertising) you can actually walk the dream, wake up society and start a transformative process. In one week, you can reach out, seek and understand the dreams of every child in your state.

There is a tool for dreamcatching that has been developed and tested across the world– that every new world CEO, every Leader, every Politician, every Design Thinker should master. To reimagine leadership and progress as a beautiful and intelligent process, to go with people…where they really want to go!

It is timely that the dreamcatching tool just been updated! It combines design thinking, ethnography, design research. Throws in play and film making. The product or output that it yields is a glimpse into the soul and deepest yearning of another human being; however far or close she or he may be. On 15th Nov, At the Unschool Fellowship, Mumbai a cohort of young creative leaders from across the world will learn how to use a new version of the tool. Let me know if you or someone you know could benefit from learning how to be a dreamcatcher!

A story about Cultural Innovation and Social Change — by Design!

In 1952, on the island of Koshima, an 18 month old female monkey named Imo, solved the problem of muddy sweet potatoes, which were provided by scientists. She washed them in a nearby stream, thereby getting rid of the unpleasant dirt.

Her playmates learned this behavior from her. They passed on this cultural innovation to their parents. And the behaviour started to proliferate. In the autumn of 1958, just about 99 monkeys were washing the yummy potatoes. But bang! Later that evening when the 100th monkey started washing her potatoes, the behaviour jumped over the sea. This new awareness was communicated mind to mind. An ideological breakthrough had occurred and colonies of monkeys on neighbouring islands were washing their muddy potatoes. A simple innovation — and then, extensive cultural change.

In Oct 2017, a monkey leapt on to our studio roof to rob us of the millet heap that we were photographing, that’s when the 100th Monkey story came to my mind; In the context of the social change that The Organics and Millets International Trade Fair 2018 (OM_ITF 2018) team is preparing for — globally! That’s really the only connection between Koshima and Karnataka. Between human beings, habits and monkeys. Wherever it may be, however obviously useful a cultural innovation may be, spreading good thing is still a difficult and slow journey.

Can there be a design to speed up the journey? Read on…To understand how a combination of good branding, smart messaging, initiatives to connect and relate with various segments of society, has created a behaviour shift in the right direction.

The Millet Man

Karnataka, its roots, its land, its farmers, drought, climate change and erratic monsoons necessitated a resurgence of millet cultivation. Millets along with organics are regarded as a viable solution for the livelihood of subsistence farmers. Farmer distress is a reality that needs out of the box thinking.

Millets are a ancient grains and a naturally organic nutri cereal that have made a timely revival and Karnataka is best suited for their emergence and spread! Millets are climate smart crops that can substitute wheat and rice in most recipes, keeping you full for longer. They are also naturally organic, which means they need less or no fertiliser. They have a low carbon footprint, are safe, healthy, tastier, versatile and more nutritious! Millets are good for the farmer, good for the planet and good for our health.

Krishna Byre Gowda, Agriculture Minister of Karnataka has evangelised the cultivation of millets and sharpened the focus on organics for better value realisation. As a next step, going beyond agriculture, to catalyse innovation and to bridge the gap between farmer and market, to create larger awareness and interest in consumers, a National Organics and Millets Trade Fair was organised in April 2017.

#LetsMillet

Millets are gluten free, highly nutritious, naturally organic and it’s almost ridiculous that we know so little about this super food. Especially given that for one quinoa that the world can’t stop raving about, we have 8 millet varieties in Karnataka (Barnyard Millet, Finger Millet, Foxtail Millet, Kodo Millet, Little Millet, Pearl Millet, Proso Millet, Sorghum). And yet, in March 2017 not too many people were talking about and shopping for millets.

Very consciously and very quickly, a wave of curiosity and interest was created — at Spread, we worked closely with the minister and a dedicated team of experts, to create the ‘Let’s Millet’ campaign. Given all the compelling reasons, we were sure that all that was required was an encouraging push — to get the Millet ball rolling.

It also helped that we got the captains of industry on camera; endorsing the idea. As a first step to accepting and owning its spread.

#ArtMillet

While older generations will hang on to status quo, younger ones are really the catalysts of change. Art Millet then was an art competition and show to let the next gen see, touch, feel and create with millets. A way to connect millets and gen next without breaking the bank.

#GoOrganicForYourOrgans

The proactive government of Karnataka has been supporting organic cultivation in the state and launching initiatives to harness the potential of cultivating, processing and exporting produce that is naturally organic. However, only when consumers adopt organics at a large scale, will the production and availability of organics become a sustainable proposition. A consumer message ‘Go Organic, for your Organs’ was simple and easy to relate to.

Millet Maga and Magalu

Two charming characters who’s superpower are the millets their mummy puts into their meals — talk to parents and children and have become important assets of the Organics and Millets movement!

#NextGenSmartFood

Organics and Millets are #NextGenSmartFood. Especially for Generation Next. This was firmly established in the Organics and Millets, National Trade Fair April 2017. The Fair created tremendous awareness and opened a new era in the understanding and adoption of organics and millets.

We saw restauranters adopting Millets…even a brand of Millets that very originally called itself ‘LetsMillet’! Culture never dies, it lives in us and can so easily be revived. A millet resurgence is already underway…the 100th Monkey effect has been kickstarted.

Where the world of Organics and Millets will converge

But what if, the Millet mania could spread across the world? What if, in every household everywhere in the world, everyone after a binge weekend (who doesn’t binge on a weekend) returns to a Millet Monday! For Karnataka’s farmers and because it’s good for the farmer, it’s good for the planet and good for us!

For this to happen, just for starters, we have created a ‘Call’ for the convergence. We have kickstarted a worldwide movement by letting the Millet man speak directly to everyone on the planet. To show them Karnataka’s glorious ripening Millet fields and invite the world of Organics and Millets to converge in Karnataka.

The day is not too far, when the message will be shared with the world. And then, can we expect the 100th monkey effect to transform the millets space so that it no longer seems like a ‘fragile personal idiosyncrasy of some and becomes a serious new mainstream alternative’.

#GrowSmart #EatSmart #LiveSmart

At the Organics and Millets International Trade Fair Jan 2018, the message will be to #GrowSmart #EatSmart #LiveSmart by adopting our #NextGenSmartFoods

Everywhere in the world there is a quest for smart alternatives. Yet however, will we be able to cross the cultural, geographical and conceptual divide and catalyse a global movement? Will we achieve the 100th monkey effect? Will the change spread? Will we create a large scale agricultural success story from Karnataka. Only time can tell — however communication, dissemination and demonstration go a long way in embedding messages along with serious onground efforts.

From time to time, great ideas make a comeback and culture throws up new answers as great old ideas in a new form. This revival however has to be designed, the idea made contextual and current. In the Karnataka Organics and Millets revival, the first stage was to get the Farmers to embrace the idea of Organics and Millets. Next came a national event that brought consumers, farmers and industry together. Besides generating enough curiosity. Now, we are getting ready for a larger spread! The Government is painstakingly connecting with industry across the country and the world via road shows. That are leading up to the OM_ITF 2018. Several food entrepreneurs and even large business have launched innovative millet lines. Its come back as a staple in many homes. More organic stores and brands are opening.

Leadership for Karnataka in the millets space, a better livelihood for the farmers, a better planet and healthier people…and monkeys!

Watch out for these hashtags and join the continuing story and the Organics and Millets movement. #NextGenSmartFood #LetsMillet #GoOrganic #GrowSmartEatSmartLiveSmart

Read about the 100th Monkey Effect here http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm

Yesterday, the Minister released a Poster and Films - do read about it in the news.

Connect with the very purposeful team of OM-ITF which includes Government of India, Government of Karnataka, KSDA / raitamitra.kar.nic.in APEDA / www.apeda.gov.in KAPPEC / kappec.kar.gov.in ICCOA / www.iccoa.org ASSOCHAM / www.assocham.org IIMR / millets.res.in ICRISAT / www.icrisat.org Spread Design and Innovation / www.spread.ooo ARKA Communications Yakshi Communications / http://www.yakshicommunications.com

www.organics-millets.in

It is essential now more than ever before, to respond creatively and fast. But wait, take a step back — it’s not enough to just be reactive, you need to have the right understanding to have the right aim before firing. The path to ‘know clearly’ starts from insights, the right insights with a great deal of churning or synthesis lead to the key insight. The key insight is the deepest, most fundamental human truth that gives you the superpower to reframe any problem as an opportunity.

Take a crash course now!

Imagine and respond to this scenario — a mother and a toddler are in a public space, perhaps a mall. The mother has driven here and has a long list of tasks. The three year old should ideally not have come along, but she didn’t have a choice. Just as mom begins her shopping expedition, the little fellow decides that he’s had enough and starts finding reasons to leave. He gets more and more agitated when he doesn’t get his way. Eventually, he throws himself on the ground and refuses to get up.

In this situation, you are a helpful stranger who is challenged to change this situation that has clearly gone downhill into a preferred one. You have 5 minutes and 10 pieces of color paper. You have to think on your feet, use your imagination and the paper creatively.

When you play this game, Points are being given for acting (to the ones playing mother and child), for creative problem solving and prototyping (to you) and everyone gets to feel the urgency and the delicate nature of the situation.

This exercise is a riot and you must try it to discover the importance of thinking laterally, of thinking on your feet, and you will realise that you need practice - in observation, understanding and continuous reflection.

It takes a lifetime of preparation to feel, think and respond creatively - in life and work situations where there is no formula, no fixed plan and very few resources at hand.

At a recent Advanced Design Thinking Workshop with Banker - Academicians, led by Spread, teams and individuals experienced the mother child scenario as a warm up exercise to understand the importance of insights and creative problem solving, of Design Thinking as process that is not linear but is about a feel, think, do mindset.

While the exercise has nothing to do with money, the scenario discussed earlier was created to emphasise the importance of (human) understanding. It’s only natural to think that Bankers are in the money business. Right? But are they not more importantly in the people business - dealing with their needs, challenges, hopes and more so aspirations. And don’t you think that there isn’t another topic around which there are higher sensitivities than money. Strangely, it’s a bit like love - that changes relationships, lives, everything!

Technology will free up Next Generation Bankers from routine tasks and they will have the opportunity to focus on being the human interface, the mind, heart and soul of the banking customer journey! Young bankers will be more and more in the people business, even as they have lesser and lesser physical contact with their clients. Clearly there is an opportunity for Bankers to be insightful design thinkers, leveraging their understanding and creativity in every interaction and in all situations.

Which brings us back to insights. That moment when the fog lifts and you see things clearly in your mind’s, as if for the first time - is a moment of insight; of understanding situations, people, life as well as your own self; in an ongoing search for truth.

The journey towards developing insights is one of lifelong practice. It is the essential ingredient of the designerly approach - the hunger for answers, the curiosity to look under the surface, the desire to go deeper and find the real problems that need to be solved. Sharing some learned and/or assimilitated approaches to developing better insights. Hope they are useful.

The hover mode

Keep the drone view, figure out the broad coordinates and hover! Practice observation with open eyes and an open mind — whether you are trying to understand events and happenings or people. Widen and deepen your view. What you can see from an objective and holistic perspective, you can totally miss from an upclose narrow view. When you begin to see connections, you see emerging patterns. This enables you to differentiate between things as they seem, to things as they are.

Fresh Eyes

Imagine you are wearing a futuristic headset, that allows you to see everything with baby eyes. Without any preconceived notions or biases. Make an effort to recognise your own biases and consciously destroy them. Be authentic. If your subconscious mind has already reached a conclusion, you will gain nothing new. A point of view is different from an insight. Observe without agendas with fresh eyes, to gain fresh insights.

This is easier said than done. Why not, as you see your own biases surface, put them down on a sheet of paper and rip it, bin it!

Real Conversations

If you have the opportunity for good old fashioned face to face conversation to gain understanding, listen truly genuinely! Come closer and don’t pass judgement - even if you don’t articulate it, the other can see it, the guards go up and the truth is hidden. Don’t take notes - instead, contribute meaning to the discussion. Respond in your own words, help give an objective view and insights.

An observation or fact is objective whereas an insight is abductive. What is happening here vs the core reason behind why this could perhaps be happening.

Mirroring

You may have heard about walking a mile in another’s shoes as a design research technique. While you may do so quite literally, I am talking here about becoming one with their story, let’s imagine a mirror. Where you see and experience another’s journey, their story, its ups and especially downs. A story that absorbs you so fully that you become the lead character and feel the pain, the desires and the aspirations.

Lets just call this mirroring — when you are not rationally reflecting (pun intended) but feeling and thus experiencing the deepest empathy.

A meditative mindset

If we train our mind over days, months, years to focus attention inwards, interestingly we become even more outwardly aware. We discover more about what is truly happening to us, around us and within us. Learning to smell, taste, listen, experience things fully.

Vipassana, for one is a direct and gradual cultivation of mindfulness or awareness, a form of mental training.

‘We learn to listen to our own thoughts without being caught up in them. We wake up to what life really is. Life has a much deeper texture than that if we bother to look, and if we look in the right way.’

I am super curious about Vipassana and will head out soon as I finish this post to find a program.

Reconstruct thoughts

The above approaches will help you kickstart the insighting process. Besides which, there are several tools and techniques. The simplest of which is sticky notes and clustering.

Tape large white sheets of paper on a wall and stand in front of them with a diverse enough group. These sheets become the canvas to freely express thoughts and ideas from a flexible and not a fixed view (the standing makes much of the difference). Once independent sparks are on colourful sticky notes, they can be clustered. Affinity mapping or clustering allows for pattern recognition and the articulation of insights. (I tried an online tool - 10,000ft insights. Quite useful but I went back to sticky notes.)

Sticky notes are a great tool to take apart thoughts, to reconstruct them in new ways. For a fresh thought ‘construct’. There is always a deeper truth or one key insight. Finding that insight is like finding gold when digging a mine. It takes rigour and while one can learn about it in a workshop, it takes lifelong practice, constant churning to experience the aha moment of arriving at the key insight.

Always ask — what is the key insight?

Coming back to our workshop where the discussion about insights started, and led to this post — there is as yet a 51% unbanked population that needs to be included. Its worth thinking about and preparing to educate the Next Generation Banker differently, to enable and empower her or him to respond effectively within a dynamic, competitive and disruptive banking scenario. All the time, engaging with and retaining happy customers while acquiring new ones.

Teams created a persona of the millennial — which we decided to also use as a proto persona for the Next Gen Banker. After which, we went into insights, clustering or affinity mapping and with much reflection, we derived the key insight.

Do see the example we developed.

It is usual to think of Millennials as a set of folks who are perhaps disengaged, distracted, directionless. When they are students of banking, the key task then seems daunting — to feed a young student enormous amounts of the most current information about a changing and tightly regulated world…money business remember! But there could be more, there is always space for improvement and its fabulous that we are consciously thinking ahead, for these young folks who’s careers are just beginning.

In the insighting process, it was realised that we need to drop our biases about banking and the next gen banker profile, train her/him to deal with disruption, shed the baggage that comes with banking being a legacy business, find alternate ways for ‘information readiness’ (think ‘mindtickle’ for instance), develop empathy, prepare for a role in the people business. Another simple and fundamental fact is that this young person who is choosing to enter the banking sphere, is not necessarily someone who is crazed about changing the world radically. He or she perhaps wants stability, wants to make it big steadily, and in the present moment, personally just wants a better life.

Can we then train Next Gen Bankers through banking to make a better life for themselves. Can we make them realize that as bankers, they are enabling others too to make better choices and design a life that is a little better everyday. If we can create the systems to do so, perhaps their job might seem less overwhelming and more empowering and meaningful.

Before you develop solutions, remember to search within, for the key insight. And remember that it is a shift from the conscious and the rational to the subconscious and super conscious — to the interconnected universe. Deep, right? No wonder it doesn’t come easy!

This is the first in a series of reflections and observations from our first workshop around design methods and banking.

The NASSCOM Product Conclave (NPC) on 26th + 27th October 2016 in Bengaluru themed ‘Navigating Turbulent Times’ will see 2,500 + software entrepreneurs, IT leaders and investors coming together for keynotes, showcases, business connects, workshops, founder talks, awards and accolades. Now In its 13th year, the NPC summit is synonymous with the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem of innovative software products developed, engineered, marketed and sold from India to the world.

Integrating design with technology, the Design and Customer Experience Summit /NPC will put the spotlight on designing successful customer experience strategies, building advanced design approaches and effective survival strategies.

Dilip Chhabria / DC Design, Dr Jan Aurenhammer / Stanford, Sonia Manchanda / Spread Design+Learning, Jay Dutta / SAIF Partners, Ranjan Malik / Storm the Norm Ventures + Anisha Motwani / Storm the Norm Ventures, Lakshman Pachineela Seshadri / SAP Labs, Parameshwaram Venkataraman / Studio 5B, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Saumitri Choudhury / Samsung Electronics, Ashvin Vellody / KPMG,Sudhindra V / IBM Interactive, Deepika Dutta Kapoor / DMI Innovations, Savy Aluvathingal / Moonraft Innovation Labs, Vishwas Mudgal / Goodwork Labs, Apala Chavan / HFI, Prof. Sanjay Jain / Avantika University, Girish Prabhu / Srishti School of Design, Sidharth Gupta / Treebo, Poonam Bir Kasturi / Daily Dump

At the Summit, Ravi Gururaj, Chair to the NASSCOM Product Council and Satyajeet Singh / Strategic Partnerships, Facebook, Shalini Chandnani / Nasscom will set the ball in motion for a design and tech revolution in the country.

At Spread Design and Innovation we are excited by the possibilities and feel honored to have partnered in curating the conversation around how we can infuse new energy and momentum in tech with design!

Join us! Do see the conference details at http://productconclave.in/

Get connected with us at www.spread.ooo