Contact me at bala@balaramadurai.net.

Blogs

How to Be Smarter About the Innovation Trends of the World? Deadline Tomorrow

Can inventing be taught or is it in your genes? The perennial question that hounds a lot of us. G. Altshuller and his colleagues set out to prove that the art of inventing could be taught. So what’s up in the world of inventing and invention after they set out with this job? What are some of the hot trends in this field? Here is a great opportunity for you to find out.

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Books and Stuff Podcast - Episode 1 - Deep Work How to Focus in a Distracted World

Welcome to the Books and Stuff Podcast Series.

Krishna likes to read books, but Bala doesn’t.

Bala likes to write, but Krishna doesn’t.

They both love to talk!

So, Bala and Krishna decided to talk about what Krishna reads.

And thus the idea of recording their chatter was born.

The two friends will discuss books they love.

This series of podcasts is for busy people. People who’d love to learn about a book without having to read one. And maybe the podcast will inspire them to get their hands on a book that interests them.

Feel free to leave your recommendations via social media or in the comments section below.

Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!

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TRIZ India Podcast Murali Interviews Darrell Mann

Murali Loganathan, a research scholar at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India had a tete-a-tete podcast recording with Darrell Mann, CEO and Technical Director of Systematic Innovation Ltd. Enjoy!

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How to Visualize Your System in Four Simple Steps

It was the winter of 2010. Mr. Murphy had a whale of a time with us fledgling professors at one of the premium centres of technology in the country. IIT Madras.

Murphy’s laws proved right.

Everything went wrong - the promised projector was out, our taxi had a flat tyre, my fellow professor’s laptop wouldn’t boot up, the students showed up on time for the class.

All disasters.

In spite of all these setbacks, Prakash (my co-professor) and I had a blast with the students. The students presented a few socially relevant problems that they were going to work on. My rest of the post will talk about one such case where visual representation helped us assimilate what the students initially attempted to explain through words. In the process, you can learn a thing or two about representing a system visually.

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Bugs Bunny and His HR Problem

These students from the HR division (Team Bullseye) submitted the following story (based on a true story) as part of their course on design thinking. They used the Karmic Design Thinking methodology. I found it very entertaining and educating. Their selfie of the entire team which wrote this piece is on the way. Pigeons take time to deliver messages, you know ;) I had fun reading this. Hope you do too!

Once upon a time there lived a rabbit named Bugs Bunny. He was employed by Mr. Kangaroo who ran a carrot cultivation farm. Mr. Bugs Bunny was very hardworking and dedicated employee and always loved to give his best. One fine day when he was picking up the carrots, his assistant, Ms. Chipmunk came running to him informing him that his mother broke her back after a monkey on the tree accidently dropped a coconut on her. She was immediately hospitalized and Bugs Bunny rushed there.

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Action Reaction Goals

Isaac Newton postulated the 3 laws of motion. One of them, the second one, introduced the concept of action-reaction. Action equals reaction is what he postulated. But, my thought is that we need to add goals to this to make a meaningful triad to let us live a meaningful life. Here, let me elaborate.

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How to get kids off mobile screens - application of inventive methodology - 0.4

Murali Loganathan is a guest blogger on my website. Murali and I have been working on this project for a few months now with two objectives in mind-

  1. Learn ARIZ
  2. To solve the “kids spending too much time with the mobile” problem.
  3. To publish a case study of application ARIZ85c from start to finish

This post is part of a series

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Sizing Up Relationships

A few weeks ago, a situation in my classroom turned into a learning experience for me. The experience gave me deep insight into human relationships - an insight that a prof from IIT Madras had tried to impress on me eons ago (with little success).

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How to add an extra day to your week

We moved into our current home about a year ago. A nice cozy apartment in a bustling neighborhood. The first challenge we faced at the new place was a stuck entrance door that wouldn’t open. When we had first seen the house, the person who had shown us around hadn’t faced any such problem (as far as my limited working memory could recollect).

A bit frustrated at not being able to enter the apartment, I called up the landlord. He replied that the door was swollen because of the rains. He went on to mention that the door was actually unlocked and all I had to do was to push hard.

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How to get kids off mobile screens - application of inventive methodology - 0.2 and 0.3

Murali Loganathan is a guest blogger on my website. Murali and I have been working on this project for a few weeks now with two objectives in mind-

  1. Learn ARIZ
  2. To solve the “kids spending too much time with the mobile” problem.

This post is part of a series

Continue reading