A reflection on 2025 through management of innovation, design thinking, and mindfulness lens

This is my reflection on the year that has gone by through the lens of three areas of my work: management of technology and innovation, design thinking, and mindfulness.

India is just waking up in deep-tech; it takes ten years: 2025 was the year of tariff and trade wars. In India, various industries were impacted due to the trade war. For example, Textiles and apparel, logistics, automotives, pharma, IT services, and more. Markets have bounced back since then. However, the uncertainty remains high. I was really impressed by China’s response. Nelson Wang, Vice Chairman of RimPac and Asian Studies, mentioned in an interview, “China has been preparing for this situation for ten years.” (5:30) Over the last decade, China reduced its dependence on the US export from 20% to 11.5%. It controlled rare earth magnates, and it was in a dominant position in the Nexperia crisis. It has made strategic investments in key technologies like batteries and EVs, AI, semiconductors, telecom, renewables, space tech, and biotech. Fighting against the century of humiliation that began with the defeat in the first Opium War (1939-42) remains the central theme in CCP ideology. China has demonstrated strategic foresight and execution in tackling American imperialism. China’s R&D budget is 2.7% of GDP while India’s is 0.66% of GDP. And China’s GDP (USD 19.4 trillion) is almost five times India’s GDP (USD 4.1 trillion). India is just waking up. For the first time, Indian government has allocated ₹10,000 crore deep-tech Fund of funds in Union 2025 budget and RDI scheme has earmarked ₹20,000 crore in FY25-26 for deep-tech sectors. Several VCs, including Celesta Capital, Accel, Blume Ventures, Premji Invest have created an India Deep Tech Alliance with a USD 1 billion commitment. Like Wang said, it takes ten years. Let’s hope the focus remains unwavering. A couple of 2025 bright spots: Pixxel launched a satellite constellation doing hyperspectral imaging at 5-metre resolution with 150+ bands and ePlane signed an MoU reportedly worth $1B to supply 788 VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) air-ambulances.

The year of stampedes and a case for design thinking: I started conducting design thinking workshops for Social Entrepreneurship students at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai in 2011. That time, IT services companies in Bangalore said empathy was not relevant to them as their customers are far off in the US and Europe, and agile implementation was more important than rapid prototyping. Things changed during Vishal Sikka’s tenure as Infosys CEO (2014-17). In a short time, Design Thinking became a buzzword. I was a beneficiary and did many workshops across the country. All along, I knew that anything fashionable fades after some time. However, to my surprise, DT didn’t fade away. I continued to do workshops. 2025 convinced me that DT won’t be going away anytime soon. This year, India witnessed 9 stampedes in public places, costing over 100 lives. The year began with two stampedes in January: the Tirupati temple (6) and the Maha Kumbh (30). Then New Delhi railway station (18), Goa temple (6), RCB stadium (11), Jagannath Puri temple (3), Hardwar temple (6), Vijay rally in Karur (41), and finally Andhra temple (9) last month. The chaos and vandalism at the Messi event in Kolkata this month didn’t result in any casualty but 17 people got injured. It shows how poor we are in designing stampede-proof public places and crowd management solutions. I remain committed to studying, teaching, and applying design thinking to solve complex social problems.

Mindfulness research enters toddlerhood, and mental health becomes a fundamental right: Mindfulness traces its roots to Buddha’s teachings. However, secular forms of mindfulness emerged in the late 19^th and early 20^th century in Burma (now Myanmar) from the Theravada tradition and in Japan from the Mahayana-Zen tradition. Given various dimensions of mindfulness, such as religious vs secular, seated vs on-the-go, goal-centric vs journey-centric, group vs individual, therapeutic vs soteriological, it is not surprising that there are several ways to be mindful. Neuroscience of mindfulness as a discipline emerged in 21^st century when the brain imaging techniques became more accessible for the researchers and subjects became available after the adoption of clinical intervention programs such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Goenka’s Vipassana. It is generally believed that the neuroscience of mindfulness is in its infancy. 2025 marks the publication of one of the first major meta-studies on mindfulness. The paper is titled “The mindful brain: A systematic review of the neural correlates of trait mindfulness” by authors from MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and West Chester University, Pennsylvania. It assesses 68 correlational studies across various forms of MRI and EEG. It identified some consistent results and many gaps in understanding. In my opinion, this year marks the neuroscience of mindfulness going from infancy to toddlerhood.

IITs and Kota-like factories have witnessed several student suicides in the past decade. India’s Parliament passed Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, which guarantees the right to access mental healthcare. However, the implementation remained poor. In the July 2025 Sukdeb Saha vs Andhra Pradesh case, the Supreme Court found systemic gaps in how institutions handle student stress and mental health. In the verdict, the Supreme Court declared mental health as an integral part of the constitutional right to life (Article 21) and issued binding guidelines to protect and promote psychological well-being in educational settings. Let’s hope the needle moves.