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 (8th year). But I hope to
finish “Power and Progress” by Daren Acemoglu.
