Dr. Bala Ramadurai | Professor & Consultant in Innovation, Design Thinking, Intrapreneurship & Technology Forecasting

Courses

Design Thinking

The students get under the skin of the user/customer and solve problems for them. The approach is based on an age old theory (more than 2000 years old) postulated by Lord Buddha. The students learn thinking tools from the design world, the TRIZ/ARIZ world, Indian arts, metaphors and the patent database. Finally, they utilize some tools from six thinking hats and Mr. David Snowden. They learn the course interactively through silence, videos, stories, inane jokes and interesting assignments.

Creativity and Innovation

This course uses the ARIZ/TRIZ thinking methodology (You could say that this course is an offspring of the design thinking course). The students bring in problems that they have been working on and I guide them to use ARIZ/TRIZ in detail. The student brings in problems that they have already understood and are fairly certain about the problem to solve using the concepts in the course.

Technology Forecasting

If design thinking is for the NOW, technology forecasting is design thinking for the future. The student uses a methodology called FORMAT - http://handbook.format-project.eu, a result of a European Union funded (~$3 million) project. The student hones their skill to think of a future timeframe of more than 10 years. They will consider the potential of the current technology, but also the alternatives and how strong or weak is their technology of interest in comparison to the alternatives. Imagination, intuition, analytics and data crunching go hand in hand in this course. The predictions from the forecasting exercise are not as important as the questions of forecast posed (first stage of the FORMAT methodology). This methodology has 4 stages - FOR(mulate) a project, M(odel) the system, A(ct) to churn out the predictions, T(ransfer) what you learnt in the process.

Intrapreneurship - A workout

Intrapreneurship is a conundrum of sorts, since it is making an entrepreneur out of an employee taking the risks of an entrepreneur with the friendly resources of a company. How did Mindtree achieve this in 2008-9? I introduce the participants to the company profile. I excite them with the remarkable history of a very different kind of company. How and why did they launch 5*50? Why is 5*50 a very different sort of program? How did the program bring out innovation and the creative entrepreneurial spirit of the company? The students assume the role of innovation managers of companies of their choice to design and present an intrapreneurship program.

Client Speak

I have worked with many clients and I always like to hear that they come out from the collaboration happy and satisfied. Have a look at what the clients said about my work.

Your TRIZ class was engaging in the way you connected with us. It helped broaden the way we approached problems.

Nari Narendrnath

Director, MTS, AppliedMaterials
In addition to knowledge and experience in design thinking, problem solving, and technology forecasting, Dr. Bala’s teaching approach was a shift from traditional pedagogy to perfect blend of giving conceptual background, hands on experience, and team learning. This suits as a learning approach for andragogy (adult learning).

Tenzin Rabgay

MBA (I&E), SIBM, Pune
We reached out to Bala pretty much last minute to help us facilitate a one day innovation workshop with one of our teams. Bala, made sure he first introduced the team to the nuances of ideation and innovation, introducing them to a framework that the team can follow holistically developing an Idea into a presentable prototype. During the facilitation of the workshop, he brought in the required energy and systematically guiding the teams to arrive at a presentable form that we could share with our stakeholders. The team thoroughly enjoyed the workshop and left rejuvenated to take up their ideas and develop them further, giving us an edge with our customers. Thank you Bala.

Vishal Bhalerao

Principal Consultant, ThoughtWorks
The students simply loved your session and so did I. They were asking me to look at how we could have some more sessions in the course from you :). They also mentioned that it was like they had just experienced the tip of the iceberg.

Supriya Chouthoy

Professor, Marketing, ICFAI Business School

From my blog

I write occasionally about a few things that are dear to me - writing about life, teaching tools and techniques, and learning about technology. I plan to write more about health and writing in general as well. Stay tuned. Please do subscribe to my blog if you like what you read.

How to be aware of the world around you - Factfulness - A books and stuff podcast

on 2019-01-30

Welcome to the Books and Stuff Podcast Series. Books and Stuff Podcast series - Are you sure you know the world around you? Let's have a quiz, shall we? Given the current population growth rate of the world (1-2% per year) and given that today, we have about 2 billion children, what will be the number of children present in 2100? 4 billion, 6 billion or 8 billion. What kind of biases plague us?

How to increase your Financial IQ - A books and stuff podcast

on 2018-12-05

Welcome to the Books and Stuff Podcast Series. Books and Stuff Podcast series - For a change, it was Bala who discussed about the book that he read. How can one be intelligent about money? How does currency differ from money? For once, Bala read a book on one of his pet subjects - investing. Krishna took it as an opportunity to kick back and grill Bala about "How to increase your financial IQ"

Design Thinking - A Primer (MOOC Open for Registration)

on 2018-11-22

August 2011, a few months before I quit the company, a gentleman tossed a question at me, "If I lose my job as a Java programmer to a computer which will write Java code by itself, then so will you. Without me, who will you teach?" I had merely applied one of the trends of technology evolution and showed the participants of my workshop a demo that they would understand. Code that might write itself.

How 'Thinking in Bets' can simplify decision making - A books and stuff podcast

on 2018-10-09

Welcome to the Books and Stuff Podcast Series. Books and Stuff Podcast series - Krishna narrates his own views and what he picked up from a book about a psychology professor who became a Poker champion. Krishna shares his views on Dr. Annie Duke's theories on decision making. Krishna personally struggled with making the simplest of decisions and this book resonates with his growth to a person who now thinks in bets.