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.

LEGO: A Toy for all Ages – Can it be localized for India?

LEGO is today 50 years old and it is a great design event. Innovation knows no boundaries and here in India too we need to celebrate the 50th birthday with an appropriate response that is fitting to the occasion. What could this be? I will get to that shortly.

What is LEGO? Why are we celebrating it?

To answer this is not a simple task since it is not one product but a multitude of things to a multitude of people and as a system of components that make up the whole it can be used and enjoyed by all ages and genders or almost by all ages and genders if we go by the age recommendations on the boxes and the instruction manuals that accompany each kit that has been sold in the market ever since it was introduced to the world in 1958 by its inventor designers. I quote here the Time magazine report on the toy and the company:
I Quote.. “.It was at 1:58 p.m. on January 28, 1958, that then-Lego head Godtfred Kirk Christiansen filed a patent for the iconic plastic brick with its stud-and-hole design. Since then, the company has made a staggering 400 billion Lego elements, or 62 bricks for every person on the planet. And if stacked on top of one another, the pieces would form 10 towers reaching all the way from the Earth to the Moon.” UnQuote
see the full story at the TIME website titled “Lego Celebrates 50 Years of Building”, By LEO CENDROWICZ Monday, Jan. 28, 2008 at this link here.

I have been fascinated by these kinds of modular construction kits and building blocks ever since my childhood when I had access to a variety of Meccano and the large Montessori blocks which incidentally were manufactured in my fathers toy factory in the 50’s and 60’s in Guindy at Madras (now Chennai). The factory was called Modern Agencies and made wooden toys and school furniture and teaching aids. The LEGO blocks however started appearing in India through product imports that slipped through the stringent import control Raj in India in 70’s and in larger measure in upmarket toy shops the early 90’s at the beginning of the era of economic liberalization in India. But for that hindrance we would perhaps have seen this product in India in my fathers toy shop as well in its hay days when it stocked over 3000 varieties of toys, dolls, games and teaching aids, all playthings that would make a child excited and fulfilled. My father’s business policy was to carry and sell only toys as playthings which had educational value and he used to frequently tell us – “my shop does not carry plastic buckets and toys, which was the format for most other toy stores in the city with the exception of the India’s Hobby Centre, which carried stocks of aircraft models and a large variety of toys. Unfortunately in the late 60’s through the mid 80’s when I had access to the shop located at the corner of General Patters Road and next to the now extinct Wellington Cinema as well as the right to take home any one that I liked, very privileged indeed, we did not have stocks of LEGO, my loss. However my daughter was more lucky since I was able to indulge my interest in the toy kit and obtain several sets of these multi-dimensional blocks with the excuse of educating my daughter when I returned home from my professional visits to Hong Kong, Singapore or Japan to further my interest in bamboo and design. Lucky girl. She still holds on to these sets although she has graduated from NID and is working as a designer in Bangalore these days. Perhaps LEGO was partly responsible for her choosing design as a profession besides the fact that she lived on campus at NID, which is the hothouse for design in India in any case.

In 1991 I had shared my daughter’s LEGO blocks with my students in the systems design class and used this as a case study of a great modular system that affords many insights into the making of good design. The blocks are well made with fine fits and tolerances and they are non-frustrating for the child since they work and provide hours of fun in imaginative play in a continued state of creative expression, wonderful. The assignments for our students that I now reflect on was set in that year as an analysis of an existing system so that we could through our study discover properties and principles that would help us in the design of our own system, in this case modular furniture systems, since the two students were from the Furniture Design discipline for whom the class was on offer. Aruna Venkatavaradan and Harkaran Singh Grewal were the students in question and both of them were assigned the task of carrying out the analysis that would lead up to the making of an informative and insightful document. Aruna’s document is thankfully available in the NID Resource Centre (now called the Knowledge Management Centre) titled Lego: Analysis of the toy as a System. Through her analysis she discovered the principles of modularity and inter-operability of the blocks on offer as well as looked at the multiple levels of organization that was used to make and offer variety and affordances to the child the ultimate user of the toy. She had categorized all the blocks using her own nomenclature and from this built her description of the toy as a system. Aruna discovered that the various block and their features could be classified and organized under a system and structure in the following manner.

The Geometric Module: Form, Dimension, Compatibility
The Functional Module: Hinges, Pins, Tubes, Features
The Marketing Module: Packaging, Economic Groups, Age Groups, Interest Groups
The Semantic Module: Form, Colour, Texture, Terminal Elements, Context
The Ergonomic Module: User Capability, Need, Age Matching, Complexity
and finally
The Economic Module: Production Features, Finished Product Configuration, Set Configuration etc.,

The geometric level was for instance provided by the shape and size of each block, the differentiation level was offered by the colour and symmetry and asymmetry of the blocks, the semantic level was offered by the cultural meanings of the terminal blocks such as hats, flowers and head types that permitted the assembly to carry different meanings for the child and so on. She used the process of sketching and drawing using isometric and orthographic views to analyse each block and then used language to sort and arrange the elements into a meaningful structure and this process revealed the inner structure of the toy and the potentials on offer by each kind of block. Great learning for her as well as for all of us involved in the discussions and debates that ensued.

What can we do in India with the LEGO legacy now that the patent that started ticking on that eventful day of 28th January 1958 when the patent application for this fascinating toy principle was filed by the son of the company founder with the new and improved principle on offer. Many me-too variations have been offered but design and imagination can make a huge difference to bring cultural relevance to the toy, which I believe is a significant one for the era of globalization, and unfortunate homogenization that we now see in all toy offerings around the world. Localisation could well be practiced and Indian themes can now appear from the stable of some enterprising Indian company who may come forward and offer the Mahabharata LEGO or the Warli Lego, to suggest only a few options here, where the semantic layer could be manipulated by the use of design imagination and explorations, particularly since the basic product is now off patent. LEGO International itself offers many Western themes but should these be the only ones that Indian kids have on offer? This is a call for design students in India and elsewhere to take up this challenge and show how the popular and effective toys (just as critical drugs and medicines could be developed from proven offerings) and these can be localized to meet extant conditions in India and other developing countries. I am not suggesting that totally new approaches cannot be attempted, do so by all means if possible, but the world of artifacts in any culture are made up of incremental innovations as well as design imagination and we must recognize this fact and invest our efforts to make the most of our resources and build quality offerings that can reach all our schools and homes.

Let us celebrate the 50th birthday of the wonderful LEGO blocks and kits and help reach these to stimulate the imagination of our children for many years to come. Let us make an Indian “LEGO” today.

Sustainability and Social Equity in Rural Agriculture and Handicrafts Sectors in India

Sustainability and Social Equity in Rural Agriculture and Handicrafts Sectors through Design Research and Action in India
Image: Metaphor of a Scare-Crow used to understand the dimensions of Farm Fresh Produce from the point bof view of bringing Sustainability and Social Equity through the entire Supply Chain, from Rural areas to Mass Markets in India. This model was created by a group of students at the NID Bangalore R & D Campus as part of the Design Concepts and Concerns course conducted by the author this week.

The concept of sustainability is usually understood in the West as a call for environmental balance and ecological considerations in the creation and management of systems and services for human consumption. However economists have recorded a rapid shift in nations endowed with substantial wealth and those with increasing deficits and the gap is growing alarmingly. The same situation appears in the disparities that are surfacing in the urban-rural divide and the process of globalization and development seems to be leaving the disadvantaged groups in an ever greater bind than ever before. A large number of farmer suicides in several parts of the country as well as the desperate migration of demoralized rural folks to the rapidly expanding urban slums is another visible indicator of this inexorable shift in India. This is an exodus that already started many years ago but of late the desperation seems to have peaked with an increased evidence of violence in many parts of the country that needs to be looked at in all seriousness. This is not just to be seen as a local law and order problem that can be suppressed easily as in the past by the use of a counter force in the form of State sponsored violence as we have seen in the Nandigram and Singhur episodes in the recent past as an outcome of the land acquisition exercise by the State Government to promote new SEZ initiatives in partnership with industrial giants from India and abroad. Both these incidents occurred in the State of West Bengal, both in connection with the accelerated process of industrialization that was being planned and supported by the Governments at the Centre as well as the State level on the premise that this was the only route that could bring in rapid development of wealth and progress which would in the long run trickle down to the peasants and the disadvantaged people of the State and the Nation. These events were precipitated by an active political opposition in the State which can be accused of political opportunism but notwithstanding these accusations we can see that the policies themselves may not be the only way forward and there may be other options that could be explored if only we used our imagination and creative explorations in the form of participatory action and test case developments using design research and action as a vehicle for these proposed explorations.

In many parts of the world this rural urban shift has almost been completed due to many reasons that are local as well as global in nature. However in India a huge rural sector has survived and sustained one of the biggest human settlements that have remained relatively unchanged for a very long time in the nature of its occupations and in many ways insulated from the massive change in other areas of the world. The sectors that have provided rural employment and self sustenance have been agriculture first and the hand crafts as the second most significant avenues that have remained open to poor and marginal rural populations. Today this very fragile base is being looked at as an area of opportunity for multi-nationals and major Indian corporations as a source of fortune at the bottom of the proverbial pyramid. Charles Handy in his paper titled “The Citizen Company” has outlined the new perceptions that have come into the question of citizenship particularly when they apply to business enterprises in transition from an era of exploitative relationships to one of stakeholder participation in a democracy. The same rules would apply to the rural poor in agriculture and the self employed crafts sectors that today employ a very large proportion of our rural populations although these are at a subsistence level and under pressure from the rapid change in communication that is both rapid and deep in nature. In my own paper titled “The Thick End of the Wedge: Skill Building to Support Livelihoods” which I had presented at the workshop on “Education for Sustainable Livelihoods” at Centre for Environmental Education (CEE), Ahmedabad in 2005 (download pdf 15 kb). Here I had called for a change in national policies to focus investments in the area of skill building across our rural population in order to nurture a creative base that could be empowering and liberating in the building of a new future for our rural poor. Urban India too is in need of ability building in addition to the usual education that is offered by our school system if we are to become a creative nation and have a population that was willing to experiment and build creative future which I call action at the “thick end of the wedge” as opposed to innovation investments only in hi-tech labs at the so called “leading edge” of our developments on matters of science and technology in our citadels of education, all at the expense of the gross neglect of the rural areas in India.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his paper (239 kb pdf)“ A Systems Perspective on Creativity” asserts that creativity is not an individual phenomenon, however gifted the individual may be, but an event that would occur when a person explored his interests and interacted in a field of the rich cultural system and in a domain of a supportive society if real breakthrough innovations are to occur in a regular manner. Therefore our attempt would be to examine the possibility of building such a rich cultural context as well as a supportive social climate as a catalyst for the sustainable development of the rapidly depleting energies in the rural sectors in India today. Vandana Shiva in her paper titled “Monocultures of the Mind” outlines the loss of diversity that occurs when traditional knowledge systems are replaced with so called modern knowledge and the loss of wisdom is debilitating for the social and economic fabric of the otherwise sustainable rural community and groups that are to be found all over the country even today (download pdf 60 kb). This is particularly true of the communities that depend on local bio-diversity to grow their food as well as meet their material needs for their economic crafts and other festive activities that are at the heart of their local culture. So the question that occurs to me is that we would need to examine the role of design in the creation of such a society and a culture in which the rural farmer and craftsman can find answers that are both sustainable as well as socially and economically equitable all the way down the supply chain in a globalised world. Can design help in such complex situations and if so what would design education have to learn by way of methods and attitudes to make this happen?

It was with the express intention of finding some answers that I had decided along with my teaching colleagues at NID to use the Design Concepts and Concerns course this year at NID to explore the whole question of sustainability as well as that of social equity, both of which have been on our educational agenda ever since the Eames India Report was drafted in 1958 based on which NID was set up in 1961. However in recent years we have been drifting to the swan song of the runaway Indian Industry which has adopted the mall culture wholesale as well as the growth first mantras that are being sung by all our governments as well as their opposition parties while the bickering is on technicalities and not on the principle that is being adopted. The National Knowledge Commission too has called for a renewed examination of the Creative Industries of the Future and on behalf of the National Planning Commission Rajiv Sethi a leading India designer has put together an approach paper and a collection of lead statements from numerous India thought leaders on the strategies and approaches that could be adopted by the Nation in this period of massive change and stress. The assignments that the students at NID are handling should be seen as an exploratory venture that could give some valuable insights to the approaches that could be followed even if they do not give complete solutions since they are after all very brief engagements bur could be a precursor of a sustained design development effort with official sanction and support if creative outcomes are to be achieved that are both effective as well as relevant to the present Indian condition.

New students at the NID Bangalore Centre have been assigned the task of exploring creative alternatives and insights towards a sustainable and socially equitable supply chain in which the intention is to protect and nurture the advantages of the rural disadvantaged, the small scale producers and the small farmer in today’s challenging environment. Their work can be seen at the Design Concepts and Concerns blog here as it unfolds and they are expected to come up with a multitude of design opportunities at the end of this course as well build visual scenarios to articulate those opportunities that they would individually feel is a priority and show us the form of their imagination for each one of the selected design opportunity. The areas of focus assigned for the supply chain research and articulation cover three areas namely, Farm Fresh produce, Dairy and Poultry products and handcrafts and Handloom produce, all to be examined from the intention of achieving sustainability and social equity in the respective supply chains all the way from the producer to the end user and these in an innovative manner. Further we believe that an exposure to real problems and opportunities within education would lead to a change in perception in the student themselves and a new focus in their career orientation to be able and willing to take on some of the complex challenges that face our country today. These explorations were also catalysed by the thoughts expressed by Tomas Maldonado a great teacher from the HfG Ulm in his book titled “Design, Nature & Revolution: Towards a Critical Ecology” (1972).

References

Prahalad, C.K "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" (Wharton School Publishing, 2004

Charles Handy, “The Citizen Company” in Creative Management & Development, third edition, edited by Jane Henry, SAGE and OU Business School, 2006, pp 3 – 17

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “ A Systems Perspective on Creativity” in Creative Management & Development, third edition, edited by Jane Henry, SAGE and OU Business School, 2006, pp 147-58

Vandana Shiva, “Monocultures of the Mind” in Creative Management & Development, third edition, edited by Jane Henry, SAGE and OU Business School, 2006, pp 199-217

M P Ranjan, “The Thick End of the Wedge: Skill Building to Support Livelihoods” paper presented at the workshop on “Education for Sustainable Livelihoods” at Centre for Environmental Education (CEE), Ahmedabad, 2005. (download pdf text file 15 kb and presentation file part one pdf file 2.6 MB and part two pdf file 2.9 MB)

M P Ranjan, “Creating the Unknowable: Designing the Future in Education”, (download pdf file 50 kb and presentation pdf file 4.1 MB)

Charles & Ray Eames, “ The India Report”, National Institute of Design, (1958) reprint 1998 (download pdf file 359 kb)

Tomas Maldonado, “Design, Nature & Revolution: Towards a Critical Ecology” Harper & Row, 1972