Intro & Plan

Meet Your Facilitator - Bala Ramadurai

Entrepreneur, Professor, Author and Innovation Coach

• Marie Curie Research Fellow at Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
• PhD from Arizona State University, USA (Materials)
• BTech from IIT Madras, India (Metallurgy)

Prof. Bala Ramadurai - Professor

• IIT Madras, Chennai, India
• Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City, Mexico
• Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune, India

Bala Ramadurai - Author

Bala Ramadurai - Innovation Coach

Bala Ramadurai - Entrepreneur

Spirelia

Innovate with Confidence

The Invention OS

Courses Taught

Design Thinking

Human Centred Design of products and services

Innovate Like a Boss

Systematic Innovation using methodologies like TRIZ, Brainstorming

Technology Forecasting

Love to keep in touch

https://balaramadurai.net/about/

bala@balaramadurai.net

http://in.linkedin.com/in/balaramadurai

My LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/balaramadurai/

Intros

Intro

1. Your role at Amdocs
2. One technology or trend you're curious about right now
3. When was the last time you built something just for fun?

Unbox Summit - Edition 4

• This year's theme: Mindset Building
• Today's masterclass: Building the innovator's mindset

Our Journey

Module 1: Why Should Your Company Be Innovative?

The world has changed

B rittleness

Systems seem strong but shatter under stress

A nxiety

Every decision feels high-stakes

N onlinearity

Small causes, disproportionate effects

I ncomprehensibility

Things don't just lack clarity — they defy understanding

Which one of these four do you feel most?

• Brittleness
• Anxiety
• Nonlinearity
• Incomprehensibility

Shout it out. or Virtual: Type B, A, N, or I in chat.

Quick Poll: Hands up

How many of you have ever been confident about a prediction that turned out completely wrong?

The "experts" said…

The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful.

Steve Jobs, 2003

"We've always done it this way"

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

"That's not my department"

Two Scenarios

Tiger or Rocky? Which approach would you adopt?

90%

chose Tiger and innovations failed

because they never talk to a single customer

So why should your company be innovative?

Because the world is BANI

Because experts get it wrong

Because 90% who don't innovate, fail

Task 1: BANI Spotting

1. Think of one change in the last year at Amdocs or your industry that caught you off guard
2. Classify it: Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, or Incomprehensible?
3. How did you respond? How would you respond differently now?
4. Share with your neighbour

Time:

Self-Evaluate: BANI Spotting

Module 2: What Is Innovation?

How do organizations innovate?

Ideas implemented should lead to revenue

Ideas are meant to solve problems

Whose problems?

Not many will like untested products

Innovation is NOT invention

What is Innovation?

1. Open your browser
2. Type the word "innovation" in a search engine
3. Click on the "images" tab
4. What is common between those images?

10s

→ 4320000s

~120 hrs (30 days)

Edison's innovation was not the bulb

He thought about the customer situation

He formulated the problem from the customer's perspective

He thought in systems, not just products

He created systems that made business sense

Innovation requires three things

• Customer Desirability
• Technical Feasibility
• Business Viability

Source - IDEO's model

Task 2: Innovation Audit

1. Think of a recent feature or product your team built
2. Score it on the three dimensions: Customer Desirability (0-10), Technical Feasibility (0-10), Business Viability (0-10)
3. Which dimension was the weakest? Why?
4. Discuss with your neighbour — what would you do differently?

Time:

Self-Evaluate: Innovation Audit

Break

Stretch. Breathe. Reset.

Time:

Module 3: How To Be Innovative?

There's a framework for this

For today: 2 steps you can use tomorrow morning

Step 2: Research — understand the real problem

Research means asking, not assuming

• What frustrations does the customer actually have?
• What job are they trying to get done?
• What do they need but can't articulate?

Step 2: Invent — find the conflict and reframe it

Whom can we learn framing conflicts from?

Source - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPRbIlMJI4Y

Can you spot the conflict?

If

Neo enters the military building

then

he can attempt to save Morpheus

but

there are three agents holding Morpheus

The conflict model: If… Then… But…

If

<Action taken>

Then

<Positive consequence>

But

<Negative consequence>

Then rewrite as: "How might we… ?"

Conflict - Put on your movie critic's hat

1. Think of a movie or novel that you really liked
2. Pick a scene you liked
3. Find out the conflict that the character faced
4. Represent in the model that I described (If… Then… But…)

Time left for the exercise:

R → I in action

Valentine's Day, 2005

Three ex-PayPal engineers launch a video dating site

Tagline: "Tune In, Hook Up"

They ran Craigslist ads offering women $20 to upload dating videos

Result after 5 days: zero dating uploads

But then they did something Tiger never did

They watched what users actually did with the platform

What they saw surprised them

People were uploading videos of their dogs

Their vacations

Their kids

Anything but dating

The conflict they found (the I — Invent step)

If

we keep our website as a dating site

then

it matches our original vision

but

nobody uses it

How might we let users share any video, not just dating videos?

The result

June 2005: open to all videos

July 2005: 100 million video views per day

October 2006: Google buys their company for $1.65 billion

18 months from zero dating uploads to $1.65 billion

YouTube

They're not alone

2 steps — that's it

Task 3: Research & Invent

1. Research: Think of a real frustration your customer or end-user faces. Not what you assume — something you've seen or heard.
2. Invent: Frame it as: If… Then… But…
3. Rewrite the conflict as a "How might we…" question
4. Share with your neighbour — does your HMW resonate?

Time:

Self-Evaluate: Research & Invent

Module 4: How To Develop The Mindset of Innovation?

IKE

I. Know. Everything.

The #1 enemy of innovation.

Quick show of hands

How many of you have heard someone say: "We tried that already, it didn't work"?

Now… how many of you have said it yourself?

Signs of the IKE Mindset - Engineer Edition

• "I've seen this architecture before - it doesn't scale"
• "That framework is just hype"
• "We tried microservices already, it was a mess"
• "Let me tell you how we solved this in the last project"
• "I've been coding for 8 years, I know what works"

Quick Activity

• Draw a pen/pencil sketch of your face from memory

• Show it to you neighbour

  Time:

The antidote to IKE

初心

Shoshin

Beginner's Mind

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few.

Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Expert vs. Beginner

One word. Type the first emotion that comes to mind.

FAIL

Imagine you're a parent. Your kid comes home from school.

What's the first question you ask?

"What did you fail at today?"

— Sara Blakely's father, every night at dinner

If she had nothing to share, he was disappointed.

She went on to build Spanx from $5,000 to $1 billion.

Pop quiz: What does WD-40 stand for?

Source - https://wd40.in/data-sheets/

The Three Mindset Shifts

Shift 1

From Knowing → to Learning

Shift 2

From Perfecting → to Prototyping

Shift 3

From Defending → to Discovering

0.8%

of your year is spent at an annual hackathon

Google gives 20% → Gmail, Google News, AdSense

Atlassian's ShipIt Days → dozens of shipped features

Innovation isn't an event. It's a daily practice.

Your Innovation Toolkit — 4 daily questions

What am I assuming that might not be true?

What would I try if I couldn't fail?

Who sees this differently than I do?

What's the smallest experiment I can run today?

Task 4: Your Innovation Sprint

1. Take the How-Might-We question from Task 3
2. Design a "smallest experiment" — something you can try in one sprint
3. Share your experiment with your table and get at least 2 critiques
4. Refine based on feedback

Time:

Self-Evaluate: Your Innovation Sprint

Wrap-up & Takeaways

Our journey today

The Mindset Shifts — Tiger to Rocky

Your Nuggets To Take Home

1. BANI is the reality — innovate or get left behind
2. Innovation = Customer Desirability + Feasibility + Viability
3. Visualize problems, find conflicts, prototype fast
4. IKE kills innovation — be Rocky, not Tiger
5. Ask: "What's the smallest experiment I can run?"

The One Thing

What is ONE thing from today that you will act on this week?

Write it down. Share it with your neighbour. Hold each other accountable.

Time:

Who will be "illiterate" in the 21st century?

(Not who you think)

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Alvin Toffler

Suggested References

1. Karmic Design Thinking by Dr. Bala Ramadurai
2. The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
3. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
4. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
5. Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed
6. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
7. IDEO
8. Stanford d.school

Acknowledgments

• Emacs - this old editor rocks! - https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
• Spacemacs - this new configuration is space age - https://spacemacs.org
• Org Mode - I run my life using this - https://orgmode.org
• Reveal.js - cool presentation script - https://revealjs.com/
• Org-reveal package - lets me live in org-mode - https://gitlab.com/oer/org-re-reveal
• Org-teaching - original codebase for this presentation - https://gitlab.com/olberger/org-teaching

Acknowledgments

• Conversations with
  1. Dr. Dmitry Kucharavy, Professor, Strasbourg, France
  2. Dr. Murali Loganathan, Head, Research and Sales, Spirelia Innovation, India

Meet Your Facilitator - Prof. Bala Ramadurai

https://balaramadurai.net/about/

bala@balaramadurai.net

http://in.linkedin.com/in/balaramadurai

Oh and one more thing

Selfie

2026-Amdocs-Innovation