O2O – Orissa’s lessons from Ohio

I agree with Vir Sanghvi, The New Indian Express columnist, who says: “Ideology aside, all nations will do whatever it takes to further their own interests – a lesson we would do well to remember” [Here is the full article TNIE dated 12 Sep 2010].

After all America is only meeting its own local challenges while balancing with global priorities. The same is expected of states and nations the world over.

Lessons from Ohio are needed for states like Orissa. Policies are needed that will attract green investments while safeguarding the interests of local productive resources. Few related posts:
Throw more light
Use Brain Power in Manufacturing

e-Governance and PLM in Orissa

Orissa fares worse than many African countries in terms of Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). {Refer TNIE 20 July 2010; Tuesday} According to this report, 64% of the state’s population has been categorized as poor. Yet another report in the same newspaper tries to extol the attempts made under the national ICT program in association with UNDP for bridging the digital divide and expanding livelihood options. It highlights the establishment of Rural Knowledge Centers (Gyan O’ Soochana Kendras) in the most backward and remote pockets of the State.

With reference to the above, there are several similar e-Governance initiatives undertaken by various departments of the State with the support of the National Informatics Center (NIC). All such initiatives are meant to bridge the digital divide for empowering the citizen. However, here are some of my views and suggestions:

• Despite several initiatives undertaken by NIC, Orissa has a long way to go in terms of true Citizen Empowerment. Till unbiased citizen satisfaction surveys are undertaken, most e-initiatives will be perceived as being merely ornamental.
• Good governance is a necessary pre-requisite for efficient “e-Governments”. It is often cited that decades of welfare governance has not helped us in alleviating poverty. In my opinion, more than welfare governance, Orissa needs clean and transparent Governance in delivering public service [thereby boosting e-Governance initiatives in HEALTH, EDUCATION, INFRASTRUCTURE & ROUTINE ADMINISTRATION]
• A good governance track record will help the State in attracting greater support from the center [despite political differences as can be seen in case of Bihar]. Instead of linking all our failures to the lack of support from the center, the State Government needs to ensure clean governance for empowering the citizens.
• There seems to be a lack of sincere intent to bridge the digital divide. Even if the intent is good, many programs have failed to deliver the desired end results. Sincere intent expects us to embrace technology wholeheartedly for delivering effective and efficient people-centric services. Quick ramp-ups of people-centric projects from concept-to-delivery are urgent necessities if Orissa has to counter the negative advances of exploitative influences.

Thus, e-Governance initiatives launched by NIC (and allied departments) need to be supported throughout the “program’s lifecycle” (PLM with a different connotation). There is a serious bottleneck here, which is perhaps being addressed by the Bihar government for alleviating its “multidimensional poverty”. Resurgent Bihar wants to spring back.

Can we not do something similar in our state?

Collaborating by Design

“Collaborate or die” says this ET column dated 2 June 2010. According to Mr. Suresh Nair, Director, Global Strategic Planning, Grey Group: “……Right now, we have an opportunity to make advertising all about ideas, integrate processes, and make planners, creative and servicing all accountable for the idea. It is the age of the C word—collaboration. We can’t pay lip service to that. Collaborate or die! It’s that kind of a world right now. Because you can’t crack a problem by yourself locked up in a room. The agency business is uniquely creative, slightly weird and lateral thinkers come here in every department. So, why aren’t we doing even more to tap that collectively brainpower? But as an industry, we believe in the cult of the personality so much that we forget some of the fundamentals.” [Click here for the full interview]

Talking of collaborative ties, we (in the academic world) have been receiving visitors from Europe and America quite regularly. Here is one interesting anecdotal experience with one such visitor. The person happened to be from USA and was under a short visiting program facilitated by USEFI. His talk was good - revolving round global collaborative models using Web2.0. Yet, after the talk, when we got down to a reality check I could see his limitation in strengthening local collaborative capabilities (around his own Institution). This was indirectly weakening his global initiatives. I could also see him being a hapless entity in the turbulence created around him through the winds of globalization sweeping over his state under the global diktats of some unseen “Universal strategic intent”. Perhaps we all are similar entities under such powerful forces. Closer home we find umpteen cases having similar characteristics. We want to go for global (read distant) collaborations by downgrading the local (read neighborhood) ties. As a result we see unhealthy competition between and within Institutes. The attached document (titled “story of strong areas and weak areas”) could well be the story of most Indian B-Schools as they continue to fail in “Collaborating by Design”.

At the same time, however, there is hope for a brighter future. It is quite interesting to see “The University Design Industry Partnership Scheme” taking off in UK. Their aim is “Profit through Collaboration, not Competition”. Initiated by the British Design Innovation (BDI) here are some excerpts from a news clip:

“….The BDI mantra is that no product, service, process or proposition ever comes to market without the knowledge and skills of several expert parties. With that precept firmly in mind, in February BDI and the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) co-hosted Propositions into Profit through Collaboration, not Competition, the first national conference of its kind attended by 37 universities and 30 directors of leading strategic design companies. What transpired was a mutual realisation that they share different but complementary experience, expertise, skills and values.”

“….UDIPS aims to reinforce the value industrial and service designers can bring to discovery-led university research results by acting as a bridge between the technology and consumer-focused market applications.”

“…It is recognised that the design and higher education sectors need to re-discover one another, because the innovation landscape is changing and its boundaries are becoming ever more blurred. It is no longer possible to simply describe universities as being ‘about research’ and industry being ‘about innovation’. Research, innovation, R&D and knowledge transfer are no longer exclusive to any single sector, if they ever were.”….[Click here to read on]

Unfortunately, India has other challenges (read this article by Francois Gautier) that prevent active collaborations. Nevertheless it is time we “collaborated by design” to handle the several inclusive growth challenges because "There is no such thing as a free lunch".

Related links:
Year of Creativity and Indian Education
Academic freedom with a reason
Intelligent cause for academic freedom
There is no such thing as a free lunch

Promoting Design Thinking in Indian Professional Higher Education

It is hypothesized that Indian manufacturing organizations have a certain firm-level design deficit. We define design deficit as a deficiency that inhibits a firm from absorbing technology. While design deficit can be measured, organizations having such deficit find it hard to absorb even soft technologies (i.e., not-so-hard technology). While research efforts are on to explore the above hypothesis, attempts have been made to identify deficiencies in the Indian engineering curriculum. It is observed that our curriculum is weak in promoting design thinking. India needs to integrate engineering design thinking to reduce the firm-level design deficit.

Our research has been governed by the philosophy and methodologies that promote concurrency during the conceptual stages of design. Earlier research has highlighted the potential of adopting concurrent engineering practices in the conceptual design stages. Concurrent engineering, while reducing the lead time, has the added advantage of creating robust designs that can be easily manufactured. This guiding philosophy, when applied to the engineering education domain, holds great promise for the future engineers of India.

Students can be seen from three perspectives – as products (that are being transformed), as customers (receiving the academic services) and finally, as stakeholders (with a stake in the academic processes). We need an education system that continually encourages them to think from all three perspectives. To that extent, Indian engineering education needs a fundamental transformation – that of developing engineers who can transcend borders. The engineering curriculum, therefore, needs to emphasize the importance of prospecting beyond the disciplinary boundaries for promoting greater interdisciplinary interactions right from the first year. Most engineering colleges, including the well established IITs, have not been able to undertake significant curriculum changes in this direction - that too during a time when global competition is mounting.

Efforts made by developed countries in preparing engineers for a flat world are becoming noticeable under the globalized environment. Views of Prof. Clive L. Dym (who directs the Center for Design Education at Harvey Mudd College since 1991) and his collaborative partners for preparing freshmen have been well articulated in the literature. In India, several notable changes were proposed by the former AICTE Chairman (Prof. R. Natarajan, Former Director, IIT Madras) to foster design thinking early in the engineering curriculum. However, a regulatory framework for exploiting related opportunities is yet to be in place.

Design thinking, as we know, promotes exploration of space beyond the stated needs. Sustained efforts are needed to develop manpower with such desirable attributes. The current regulatory framework for engineering education does not provide an atmosphere for promoting interdisciplinary interactions. Consequently, therefore, most engineering schools restrict themselves within domain-specific disciplinary silos. Even the new engineering schools, which have the advantage of adopting clean-slate academic designs, are unable to adopt such modern practices. Only IIT Madras has been able to bring “Concepts of Engineering Design” into the first year with “Engineering Ethics” in the final year. As a result the mentee school (i.e., IIITD&M Kancheepuram) has been able to develop along these lines. The other mentor IITs need to create similar ambience. The above courses need to be facilitated by a leadership that thinks and acts differently by fostering team work.

Design thinking is being seen as the new competitive advantage. We advocate the need for promoting design thinking early in the engineering and business school programs of the country.


Footnotes (extracted from e-mail Jan 2010):

• The KIIT-DS PLM initiative is driven by design thinking. The following blog post titled "Design thinking in the upcoming IITs, IIMs and NITs" might be of interest to readers. Read on: http://ksahu.blogspot.com/2010/01/design-thinking-in-upcoming-iits-iims.html


• Also, the following information from the Harvard Business Online web site showcases a book titled "The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage" by Roger L. Martin (26 Oct 2009). Read on: http://hbr.org/product/the-design-of-business-why-design-thinking-is-the-/an/12176-HBK-ENG


• Further, the attached article is for readers interested in having a design thinking perspective on strategy. [Read article: TOWARDS AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL MERGER OF DESIGN THINKING, STRATEGY AND INNOVATION by Ulla JOHANSSON and Jill WOODILLA; 8th European Academy Of Design Conference - 1st, 2nd & 3rd April 2009, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland]

Related link: http://ksahu.blogspot.com/2009/11/dassault-systemes-plm-center-kiit.html

A School of Design @IIT Bhubaneswar

IIT Bhubaneswar will have four more schools with interdisciplinary approach (TNIE; 19 March 2010). The inclusion of a School of Design and Creative Arts is a welcome step forward. However, one needs to ensure that design thinking permeates beyond the boundaries of the school into the other schools of “engineering sciences” (the following blog post partly articulates the related concerns).

Let us hope that IIT Bhubaneswar will be able to set examples to promote design thinking from Orissa.