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Aakaar – Manesar Design Festival

20 Apr 2022
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- Innovation & Design Thinking
Design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation—anchored in understanding customers’ needs, rapid prototyping, and generating creative ideas—that will transform the way you develop products, services, processes, and organizations. Instead of relying solely on historical data or making hazardous bets based on instinct rather than facts, design thinking allows you to make decisions based on what customers truly desire.

Design thinking brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable.

Desirability: What makes sense to people and for people?

Feasibility: What is technically possible within the foreseeable future?

Viability: What is likely to become part of a sustainable business model?

The vision of SOIL is to create innovative and creative leaders who can ultimately change the world through a design thinking approach with the help of innovative thinking. Based on that approach, SOIL and the School of Business Design organised their annual Design Festival named ‘Aakaar – Manesar Design Festival’. This was an interactive gathering of experienced design thinking practitioners, entrepreneurs, and students across the globe. Through Aakaar, SOIL curated a platform to standardize knowledge sharing and enhance the understanding of what is driving the changes we all experience in today’s world. The theme of the event was D.O.T (Design. Originate. Think) wherein we highlighted how design thinking and innovation are framing the future. Great industry leaders, entrepreneurs, Policy Makers, Change Makers and Design Practitioners were invited to the event.

The day started with a great session by Mr Arun Jain, whose keynote speech focused on what Design Thinking is and how it is present in everything we do. He explained to the students how brands need to think about the customer when designing products. He shared that DT is a process for solving problems by prioritizing the consumer’s needs above all else. Case studies like Macintosh, Zerodha, Disney, and Government projects were also discussed.

Following that session, we had a very insightful Meetcast with Mr. Anirban Bhattacharya who is the founder of The Painted Sky and UBQT Design Thinking School. He took the time to share how Design Thinking is used to bring sustainability to industries. His rich experience, coupled with his deep insights and his discussion with Ms. Jyothika Pruthi left the attendees in awe.

Mr. Ezhilan Bhaskar came on next with his talk on ‘Getting out of the Box’. As Vice President of YourStory Media. he spoke about his experiences working at Yourstory Media and the students were very inspired. Many took away the understanding that Design Thinking is actually a personal transformation journey – a change in the way one thinks.

Following that very insightful session, then we had another great speaker Mr. Vivek Atray, He is a Founder of SUVICHAR Think Tank and a Motivational speaker. He spoke about “Design Thinking for Social Impact”. He also taught the attendees about the need to take action now. He emphasized how society needs intervention in creative and innovative ways and encouraged the students to take up this mantle.

Mr. Dev K Dutta, a Design Thinking Coach and Expert, explored how to move from an Innovator Mindset to Design Thinking, clearly laying down the path for his listeners. He spent sometime explaining the mindset requirements for any Design Thinker and explained concepts like Creative Confidence, Focus on the User, Two Thinking Modes and the ‘Yes-And’ Logic.

At last, the day concluded with an interesting and informative panel discussion on “Design Mindset”. Our brilliant panellists were Mr Anuj Prasad, Mr Nalin Pant and Mr Ashutosh Nayak. The whole discussion has been moderated by Shri. Yogesh Andlay. They discussed the process of problem-solving in a creative manner, the innovative approach to serving all stakeholders, key constraints and more.

I am really thankful to SOIL for giving me this wonderful opportunity to host this event. I have learnt a lot by participating and engaging with incredible industry leaders. The session was very insightful and meaningful and I am looking forward to more such events in my future endeavour.