Catalign Quarterly - Issue #1 - June 2026

After a two-year gap, I am restarting Catalign Quarterly, a newsletter that doesn’t have a good track record of running quarterly. The motivation is twofold: it nudges me to reflect on my work, and it creates an opportunity to keep in touch with clients, friends, and well-wishers.

Crux of the challenge-based strategy: The quarter began with a day spent with the managers of Broadridge India at Lahari Resorts on the outskirts of Hyderabad. During the workshop, we explored what it means to identify the crux of business challenges, develop a response based on an internal bright spot, and design low-cost experiments to validate the response's assumptions. Thanks to Krishna Kumar of ISEC for the opportunity.

Strategic innovation: It has been fifteen years since I began teaching in the executive education programs on management of innovation at IIM Bangalore, thanks to the break given by my friend Prof Rishikesha Krishnan.  This quarter, I had the opportunity to teach in the Strategic Management of Innovation program run by Prof Sai Yayavaram in April. With the trade war and the US-Iran war in the background, it wasn’t too difficult to communicate the significance of building technology-based innovation capacity.

Designing robust interventions: I became curious when I read Joseph Stiglitz talk about robust interventions, “interventions that are simple enough that you don’t have to very fine-tune to make them work, even if you have a bad president like President Bush.” That was fifteen years ago. It became the theme of the year for me in 2011. I also gave a talk on designing robust interventions at TISS, Mumbai, the same year. Ideas don’t leave you easily. I facilitated a 2-day workshop on the same topic last April in the beautiful Kuppam campus of Agastya International Foundation for the K V Raghavan Fellows.

Design thinking: It was a pleasure to introduce design thinking to women entrepreneurs of the Goldman Sachs 10K Women program at IIMB’s incubator. And also, to the executives of Mann+Hummel and transitioning Defence officers at IIMB.

Confusion to clarity:  Thanks to the encouragement from Prof Vasanthi Srinivasan, I got an opportunity to combine two of my favorite topics - innovation stamina and mindfulness to offer sessions on “Confusion to clarity: a work-life alignment exercise”. It was well received by the executives of ComputaCenter and the participants of Tanmatra, IIMB’s flagship program for women leaders.

Young entrepreneurs in deep-tech: Last year, I wrote about my feeling that India just woke up in 2025 to realize its lack of deep-tech capacity. In January, I invited young entrepreneurs, in their teens and twenties, to talk about their deep-tech venture experiences during my course on “Managing technological innovation” at IIT Bombay. I summarized their talks recently: Dr. Darshit Parmar of Flash Cryogenics, and Khushi Chandak on her electrochrome-based startup journey. I also got a chance to interview my nephew Neel Redkar, 21, who is doing exciting work on foundational video-action models at Standard Intelligence in San Francisco (summary of the interview, Spotify podcast).

Reading & writing: While reading was scattered this quarter, I managed to finish the first part of the Ibis trilogy “Sea of poppies” by Amitav Ghosh and “Disloyal: a memoir” by Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s fixer and personal attorney for a decade. I enjoyed both books and hope to write about them. I wrote my takeaways from “The Dark Side of Camelot”, a JFK biography by Seymour Hersh, and My 3 takeaways from Richard Gombrich’s “What the Buddha thought”. My reading in the next quarter will be influenced by my preparation for the upcoming course at IIMB, “Strategic management of technology and innovation” starting in September (8^th year). But I hope to finish “Power and Progress” by Daren Acemoglu.

Trekking and retreat in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand: During the trek to Pindari glacier last month, what struck me was the adoption of solar everywhere in the mountains. In contrast, we could also see the opportunity Jio is trying to tap – that of satellite-based phones; even Pindari Baba is waiting for it at 12500 ft. We also spent 3 days at the serene Krishnamurti Foundation India (KFI) retreat at Jalna near Almoda and did a group reading-cum-reflection on his Colombo talk in 1980, “The book of life”.