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

Services

Design Thinking

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

Executive Coaching

“How does one execute a large innovation project within my company? Do I get personally involved or delegate? Am I listening or telling? I am doing my best, what more can I do?” If these are questions that keep coming to your head (and you happen to be the head of a company or department), you have reached the right place. One on one coaching can work wonders in clearing out the fog around some of the issues you may be facing in your workplace.

Technology Forecasting

If design thinking is for the NOW, technology forecasting is design thinking for the future. The learner uses a methodology called FORMAT - http://handbook.format-project.eu, a result of a European Union funded (~$3 million) project. The learner 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).

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 550? Why is 550 a very different sort of program? How did the program bring out innovation and the creative entrepreneurial spirit of the company? The learners 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

Updates (News and 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.

Micro-progress on Habits and Tasks - Solpa Adjust Maadi

on 2020-09-23

Rome wasn’t built in a day is one of the adages you might have heard. Many projects and tasks that I have had in the past and those that are in my inbox are deadline driven. So, the deadlines bring in the drive to complete them. However, there are some tasks which are nice to do, and they do not have any deadlines. They get postponed all the time, particularly because there is no deadline attached. How does one tackle this situation? Micro-progress. Mark the task on your calendar, do a little (barely minimum) work and write that down in the description. Now, postpone the task to some other date. That’s it! The next time, the task shows up, do the exact same thing.

GE Global invited talk on Design Thinking: The Zen Way

on 2020-09-21

Dr. Srinivas Chirravuri and Gautam Goenka, are seasoned facilitators from GE Crotonville, the learning bastion of GE. In these times of online meetings and webinars, Dr. Srinivas, or Ch as he prefers to be addressed, and Gautam have thought of a series of enlightening topics. One of the topics they had chosen for such a session was Design Thinking. Ch reached out to me and from the outset, we wanted the talk to be a bit different from other webinars that I had given in the past.

Books and Stuff Podcast - Episode 9 - How to invest the Warren Buffett way

on 2020-09-16

Welcome to the Books and Stuff Podcast Series.

Books and Stuff Podcast series - Earning and learning seem to distinct spheres of life. However, Warren Buffett through his investing has shown us all that they needn’t be separate things, in fact, Bala and Krishna believe that they are one and the same. But how does one learn about earning?

The book The Warren Buffett Way written by Robert Hagstrom points out the 4 mined from the billionaire investor’s life long learning, er… earning, er… investing journey. (These questions are our own interpretations of Hagstrom’s explanations)

Business Tenet - Do you understand how the business makes money? If you were the chief of the company, would you know how to make money?
Management Tenet - Do you know how the people run the business? Do you know who the leadership is? What is their unique management style?
Financial Tenet - After crunching numbers, are you able to understand if the business has indeed been profitable?
Value Tenet - Is the stock available at a discount from its projected value? How do you project value?

Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!

Daily Review - Building blocks for a productive work-life

on 2020-09-09

Productivity is one of my favourite topics. Some of my friends joke that I spend more time thinking about productivity than actually being productive. Recently, I read Cal Newport’s post on Taming the Productivity Dragon¹ and I thought about–what is my way of taming the productivity dragon? This is a post which describes part of my system - Daily Review.