Looking back : Visitors to Design for India

One and a half years on, looking back at the stats of visits, visitors and page views on the Design for India blog.

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Image 1: Graph of visits, visitors and page views on the Design for India blog over the past 18 months.

As the year 2008 winds down with a sharp fear of worldwide recession that has been sweeping the global financial markets we have a chance to look back at the year that was in the context of this blog about Design for India. Design it seems is drawing growing attention from around the world and in particular Design for India has shown a growing trend in terms of visits, visitors and page views that have been clocked over the past 18 months that this blog and its visitors have been actively monitored across a few parameters of interest.

Image 2: Visits to Design for India from 115 cities across India.

Where do the visitors come from?
The single largest block is from India and I am happy for that since it tells me that interest in design is growing in India and that internet users too are getting to visit a site about Design for India. However it is a bit disturbing that most of these visits are from the major metros although there is still an unaccounted set that could be coming from small towns these do not show up in the Google Analytics view of cities from which the traffic is seen. 115 cities in India have accounted for 23,878 visits and bulk of these came from Ahmedabad, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. Going down the list of cities it is gratifying to see small towns in remote areas listed and we do hope that the message from this blog will reach more schools and workplaces across India where it really matters in the year ahead.

Image 3: Visits from 52 regions of the USA.

The second biggest block of visits comes from the USA and all 52 Regions have shown visitor traffic of 8268 visits and here California, New York, Illinois, Texas and Florida rake in the major share as the top five regions for visitors to the Design for India blog. These 52 regions include as many as 1943 cities with Los Angles and its suburbs, New York, San Francisco and Chicago contributing the largest number of visitors from the USA.

Image 4: Visits from 153 countries across the world with India and USA as top sources of visitor traffic to this blog.

The worldwide picture is also showing some interesting statistics. 42,511 visits have come from 153 countries with India topping the list at 23,878 visits, USA at 8,268, UK at 1,738, Canada at 744, Australia 578, Germany, 480, France, 384 followed by Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland. The city count amongst the top countries are as follows: UK from 296 cities, Canada from 127 cities, Germany from 149 cities and France from 121 cities, and so on.

The top pages visited are listed below and in all 72,071 page views have been recorded across the 105 articles posted on this blog over the past 18 months.

1. Mayo Clinic Sparc and IDEO Design – 1,186

2. Ginger: Design of Smart Hotel Chain – 1,169

3. Herman Miller and Vitra in India – 1,157

4. Bamboo Mat Boards from IPIRTI - 948

5. LEGO: Toy for all ages - 926

6. Rainwater Harvesting: FURAAT Systems - 919

7. Handmade in India: Handbook of crafts of India - 910

8. Charles and Ray Eames: Legacy in India - 908

9. Jewellery and Retail sectors in India - 832

10. Making of Design Entrepreneurs in India. - 668

11. KaosPilot: A Business School that teaches Design - 651

12. IFA: Bamboo exhibitions in Stuttgart and Berlin - 643

I look forward to an active period of design use ahead in 2009 that starts from tomorrow and I wish all the visitors a

Very Happy New Year

We also wish that this kind of design use will be supported by sustainable models which is the theme for the World Economic Forum in January 2009 at Davos for which we have just concluded a series of workshops and charettes on sustainability through which we hope to reach out to the policy makers in industry and governments across the world. Design for India and design from India will, I hope, make an impact across the world in the days ahead.

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

KaosPilots at NID and in Mumbai: Design for India being redefined

Image: KaosPilots at Gautam and Gira square at NID, Paldi campus.

KaosPilots at NID and in Mumbai: Design for India being redefined
The new age business school called KaosPilot was set up in Aarhus, Denmark more than 15 years ago in response to a pressing need to get young people to think afresh about their careers as entrepreneurs and creative professionals in a world that was becoming very commercial and market driven. Uffe Elbeck, the founder Principal of the school in the intro to his book, KaosPilot A-Z, says this about his school, looking back over the past 15 years. Uffe is currently the Chairman of KaosPilot International Board from 2006, now that it has taken roots in many countries and growing in influence and locations.

I quote – “In the historical rearview mirror it’s nothing less than an educational, economic and organizational miracle – and fairytale – that the school and education have survived. And we just have’nt just survived – we’ve thrived. We’re alive, – really alive. With a pulse in the heart, sweat and blood, here and now. In the centre of Aarhus – but the whole world as our playground.” – unquote.

In 15 years of experimentation the KaosPilots have been able to redefine management education and make it a creative enterprise that drew inspiration from the field, live and in real contact, rather than through the use of dry case studies that are discussed threadbare in a crowded classroom. The KaosPilot is an International School for New Business Design and Social Innovation, a way forward for many management schools that want to embrace the value of creativity, innovation and design in their approach education and change making processes in our various activities.

The KaosPilot schools do not produce plain vanilla managers who will then work their way up a corporate ladder. They produce leaders who are both playful as well as committed to a cause, something close to their heart and meaningful to society as well. They are trained in the ways of the Fourth Sector that lies outside the traditional three sectors of Government, Private and Non Government sectors but draw the strengths of all these in good measure in order to build sustainable and socially equitable business models in a creative manner, all to produce great value. This is what I call design.

35 KaosPilots and two teachers are now in Mumbai for their three month “Outpost” where in a project mode they would explore the city and its resources and then build sustainable business models for those in need of their skills, all in a sensitive manner. Working in groups and connecting with other committed souls in the city, they would explore, experiment, dialogue, model, build and test the proof of concept offerings that are a product of their research and imagination before going all out to establish the enterprise with local participation and leadership in each of the areas that have been chosen by the sense-making that precedes the intense-action of implementation.

Why 35? This is the batch size at all KaosPilot schools and each student is called a Navigator at their website that is full of exciting detail of their tasks and experiences in the field. While the school offers a bachelor’s degree equivalent, the students are over 21 years of age, mature and with a clearly formed purpose in life, to make a real difference. They come to the school to pick up skills and to address needs that most business schools ignore. In the words of Marco Visscher, Managing Editor of Ode, a Netherland based international magazine – “It sometimes seems that while the world economy has drastically changed, business education has stayed still.” KaosPilot offers another way. He goes on to say – “And now, after being Scandinavia’s best-kept secrets, KaosPilots is aiming to breakthrough internationally”. Now they are in India, welcome.

Image: KaosPilots with Prof M P Ranjan in his office at NID.
Three members of the Mumbai Outpost team traveled over the weekend and arrived at NID, Ahmedabad yesterday and spent two days with us at the Institute, very refreshing ideas and process of working. Perhaps this heralds a new period of cooperation between NID and a business school with the same values and commitment to change, real change in the right direction. KaosPilots, Sophie Uesson and Finnur Sverrisson and their teacher Mans Adler spent two days at NID and interacted with students and faculty in order to understand our processes and experience our facilities on the Paldi campus. We look forward to seeing the results of their stay in Mumbai and the bonds that this visit will forge with designers and managers in Mumbai and Sweden in the days ahead. We are keen to be in the centre of all this action as we move forward from here.