The Faculty Blog @ IIT Institute of Design

India Immersion Program Presentation at ID

 

In December 2011, nine students from the IIT Institute of Design traveled to India on a three week program organized by ID and Godrej&Boyce Ltd. During these three weeks, they worked on a strategic project with nine executives and the VP of Innovation from Godrej&Boyce. They were part of new pilot program at ID called the India Immersion Program. 

On Tuesday, March 20, 2012, join the presentation and discussion as Navroze Godrej, the students from the India Immersion Program, and I talked about our experiences during this program as well as the effect of this program on ID and future Immersion programs at ID.

Anijo Mathew speaks at the 11th CII NID Design Summit in Delhi

I was invited to deliver a keynote address at the 11th CII NID Design Summit held in Delhi on 8-9 December 2011.

The Summit featured some great keynotes from VIjay Kumar at IIT ID, and James Woudhuysen, Professor at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

I spoke about the move from an Industrial economy to an Information economy and what business and design can do to affect change in this context. The same presentation was also made to an interesting mix of business folks and designers in Mumbai at the invitation of Aparna Piramal (of the Piramal group and BP Ergo). Aparna writes extensively about therole of Design in Indian business and it was quite interesting have a conversation with a group hosted by her. The session was attended by Radhika Piramal (VIP), Devita Saraf (Vu Technologies), Ratan Batliboi, Preeti Vyas among others.

 

 

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Dean Patrick Whitney leads a CEO panel in discussion in Mumbai

The Dean of the Institute of Design led a CEO panel in discussion about reframing innovation for India. The panel consisted of Mr M S Unnikrishnan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Thermax Limited; Mr R Mukundan, Managing Director, Tata Chemicals Limited; Mr Jamshyd Godrej, Chairman & Managing Director, Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company Limited; Mr S Mahalingam, Executive Director & Chief Financial Officer, Tata Consultancy Services; Mr Sudhir Trehan, Vice Chairman, Crompton Greaves Limited; and, Mr Arun Nagpal, Managing Director, Minda NexGenTech Limited.

The event titled Reframing : Integrating Strategic Design thinking in the Boardroom Agenda was organised by CII and Godrej in conjunction with the ID-Godrej India Immersion Program. You can read an associated interview of Patrick Whitney in the Economic Times here. 

India Immersion Program 2012

The India Immersion Program was an innovative program where a team from the Institute of Design (9 students led by 1 faculty member) worked with a team from Godrej& Boyce in India (9 interdisciplinary members led by the VP of Innovation) to develop solutions for a problem of strategic importance to Godrej. Through the tenure of the project, the teams immersed themselves in the emerging economy context of India through engagements with local people, place, and culture; interactions with eminent {government, design, business, and technology} personalities; as well as held design discussions with their counterparts.

The program was supported by generous funding from the Godrei group, a $3 billion conglomerate in India and the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology, a leading school of Design in the US. ID students only had to bear the cost of travel to India and any expenses outside the period of the 2 week program.

4 teams of ID students and Godrej executives came up with 4 innovative strategic directions for Godrej. The final presentation was made to the General Management Council of Godrej & Boyce which includes the Chairman, Mr. Jamshyd Godrej and the  Executive Director & President, Mr. Phiroze Lam.

Here are some photographs from the sparkling new Innovation Centre at Godrej that the program was housed in.

 

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StreetMuseum: Augmented Reality on the streets of London

via gizmodo.com

Eerily similar to a project done by my students in the Interactive Media Workshop...a great implementation of AR technology in the city.

StreetMuseum mashes Google Maps and geo-tagged content to generate interesting locative media. Such intersections of technology, architecture, and urban space is a very exciting direction for interactive technology and media. Imagine what this will do for learning!