The Next Disruption: Design Thinking

“A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” -Steve Jobs

Last Saturday, we hosted our very first Next Conference in IIT Delhi, as a part of our Next Events series. The conference focused on design thinking, an entirely creative process that has the potential to affect every aspect of life and business. It combines rationality, creativity and empathy rather than taking a solely analytical approach to solving problems or trying new things.

It was an environment where the long-due combination of design theories and real world application actually happened. Speakers and participants discussed how their diverse experiences, interests and ideas all combined together to advance product design, environmental sustainability and business management.

The conference focused around the opportunities that lie within Design Thinking (and it’s application), and gave examples of how it’s been used to find truly innovative products and solutions to existing problems in multiple fields: retail, architecture, science, web, wearable tech, and fashion.

Speakers included a host of national and international speakers that are thought leaders in their respective fields and helped the audience open the way they saw the world and their problem-solving schemas.

Some of the most notable speakers included:

Alison Lewis, named one of Fast Company’s most influential women in 2010, showed how she is using design to merge fashion and technology.

Gautam Mahajan, President of the Customer Value Foundation illustrated how he designed the bottoms of the soft drink bottles we use all the time.

Rajat Tuli, CEO & Fire Fighter at Happily Unmarried discussed product design to fit market needs.

Gautam Malik, Head of Design & Creative Services at Jabong.com discussed the semantics of color.