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/

Your Intro

AI usage policy

• Please use AI tools as necessary
• Please remember that AI can make mistakes
• Please check with me, if you have any doubts or questions
• Please remember that AI, sometimes, behaves like a junior colleague
• Please don't pass off results from AI as your own
• Please cite results from AI, if you have used AI

Two Scenarios

Tiger or Rocky?

Which approach do you think you would like to adopt for your startup idea?

90%

Tiger

Design Thinking is Human Centred Design

How do organizations innovate?

Ideas implemented should lead to sales/revenue from the customer

Ideas are meant to solve problems

Whose problems?

Not many will like untested products

A Four Step Efficient and Systematic Process called Design Thinking

Four Noble Truths

• Dukkha
  • Acknowledge that there is suffering
• Samudaya
  • Delve into the cause of suffering
• Nirodha
  • Think of ways to end the suffering
• Marga
  • Walk on the path to end the suffering

4 Phases of Design Thinking

• Dukkha
• Samudaya
• Nirodha
• Marga

• Empathize
• Analyze
• Solve
• Test

• "Don't take my word, apply this for yourself"
• "cycles"

What are "cycles" in the context of an organization?

Go EAST for Design Thinking

What hasn't changed over these cycles of products?

Garbage picker's experience - IGG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOwxjTlhWII

Patient-Centric Design Thinking

Watch this - https://youtube.com/watch?v=FkJD9bYS-As

Empathize

Empathize is visual story telling

Customer Journey Mapping is the tool we will use to communicate the story

Rohan, the Sales Manager Case Study

The Persona

Name: Rohan
Gender: Male
Location: Pune, India
Age: 35
Description: Rohan is a Sales Manager. He is responsible for the sales team and ensuring they meet their quarterly and annual sales targets for the new residential project. He is a results-driven individual who values efficiency and quality leads. He often feels the pressure of sales quotas and relies heavily on the marketing team to provide a steady stream of potential buyers.

Customer Journey Map - Before

CJM - During

CJM - After

List of problem statements

• The leads generated by the marketing campaigns are not always of high quality, leading to a low conversion rate for the sales team
• There is often a delay in communication and feedback between the sales team and the marketing team
• The lead nurturing process for initial leads is not always smooth
• Rohan needs a more detailed breakdown of lead sources and quality to better strategize for his team

Customer Journey Mapping

1. Write the customer's activity
2. Write the major steps of the user experience (Use one sticky note per step)
3. Split the story into 3 - Before, During and After

Mock Scenarios

1. Hospital struggles reducing patient discharge delays
2. IT firm needs faster data recovery tools
3. Consumer brand wants eco-friendly packaging alternatives
4. University seeks better student mental health support
5. Chemical plant aims to minimize hazardous waste

Your Turn

1. Pick one mock scenario or create your own
2. Draw a customer journey map (Draw pictures, if you want)
3. List the problems of your customer
   • Tip - No solutions, please

Time left for the activity:

Self-evaluate

• 1 mark for Name, gender & age of customer
• 1 mark for location of customer (city, etc)
• 1 mark for writing down the main activity of the customer
• 1 mark each for dividing the customer journey map into 3 sections - Before, During and After
• 1 mark each for writing at least 2 steps of the customer journey per section (Before, During, After)
• 1 mark for listing 2 or more problem statements

Analyze

The Analysis - Conflict or Contradiction

Where can we learn how to define a conflict or a contradiction?

All that is fine, but where is conflict used on an almost daily basis?

Why so serious?

The Matrix

The conflicts

If

Morpheus reveals code,

then

agents hack into Zion's mainframe,

but

Zion is more important than Morpheus

If

tank pulls the plug,

then

Zion's codes will not be revealed,

but

Morpheus will die

If

Neo enters the military building,

then

he can attempt to save Morpheus,

but

there are three agents holding Morpheus

Bhool Bhulaiyya

The clip

The conflict

If

Manjulika (Avni) kills "Siddharth",

then

her revenge is complete (and Avni is cured of her illness),

but

Avni loses her husband

Source - https://trizindia.org/2009/09/triz-in-films-ideas-for-fooling-filmi-ghost/

Conflict or Contradiction Model

If

<Thing happens or Action taken>

Then

<Positive Consequence>

But

<Negative Consequence>

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:

Conflict of Interest - Rohan Case Study

If

The marketing team generates a high volume of leads.

Then

The sales team has many potential customers to contact.

But

A significant portion of these leads are of poor quality, leading to a low conversion rate and wasted time for the sales team.

How Might We questions

• A question hack to make any problem solvable.
• Desired results converted into how might we (HMW) questions

FROM MY CASE STUDY

How might we improve the quality of leads so that the sales team can focus on converting potential customers rather than spending time on unqualified contacts?

Task - Conflict

1. Select a problem from your previous list of problem statements
2. Frame the problem as a conflict using the If… Then… But… model
3. Frame the desired results as How-Might-We questions
4. The slides are here - https://kdt.balaramadurai.net/2026-IIMK-DT/Analyze.pdf

Time left for the activity:

Self-evaluate

• [ ] 1 mark for If
• [ ] 1.5 marks for Then
• [ ] 1.5 marks for But
• [ ] 1 mark for How-Might-We question

Solve

Silent Brainstorming

• Write down all ideas for your analyzed problems
• Write down as many solutions as you can

Time left for the activity:

Self-Evaluate

• 1 mark for every idea you have written down (max marks of 4)
• 1 bonus mark if you have based on your idea on someone else's idea

Теория Решения Изобретательских Задач

Теория Решения Изобретательских Задач

TRIZ

TRIZ Nina Videos

Rohan Case Study: Ideas

1. Implement a unified lead scoring system
2. Create a dynamic feedback dashboard
3. Develop a personalized lead nurturing chatbot
4. Reverse the marketing funnel with hyper-targeting

Your Turn

1. Pick the HMWs (from Analyze)
2. Apply The other way around principle on the problems to generate ideas
3. Goto https://triz40.com/aff_Principles_TRIZ.php and try and apply other principles to generate more ideas
4. Combine all ideas (preliminary as well as TRIZ based) into a concept
5. Slides are here: https://kdt.balaramadurai.net/2026-IIMK-DT/Solve.pdf

Time left for the activity:

Self-Evaluate

• 3 marks for 1 idea
• 2 bonus marks for any extra ideas you may have

Test

Prototypes

Path forward

• Build a prototype (very basic, just to test out the concept)
• Take your prototype to the user and observe how they react to it
• Videograph/photograph their reactions using the prototype (with their permission, of course)
• List the problems that your customer face with this new prototype (Empathize v2)
• Find out why they face these problems (Analyze v2)

Conclusion

Now What?

①

②

Register for design thinking course on NPTEL

https://elearn.nptel.ac.in/shop/nptel/design-thinking-a-primer/

• IIT Madras certificate
• Join the community of 120,000+ learners who have already benefitted from the course

If you want the course for your team or department, contact me

• IIT Madras certificates
• Customized innovation and KDT coaching
• Your projects will attain Innovation Nirvana

Suggested References

1. Karmic Design Thinking by Dr. Bala Ramadurai
2. Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society by Prof. Karl Ulrich, U. Penn
3. Change by Design by Tim Brown
4. And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared, by G. Altshuller
5. IDEO
6. Stanford d.school
7. Wikipedia.org - Four Noble Truths

③

Suggested Videos

Watch this - Empathize

Watch this - Analyze

Suggested Videos

Watch this - Solve

Watch this - Test

①②③

1. Search
2. Learn
3. Watch

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
- Plantuml - for all the cartoon work - https://plantuml.com/
- Hugo - for converting into static html - https://gohugo.io
- Gitlab - for hosting my website and the presentations - https://gitlab.com

Acknowledgments

• Conversations with
  • Dr. Dmitry Kucharavy, Professor, France
  • Dr. Murali Loganathan, Director, Research, Privatecircles.co, India

You may use these to note down the References and Videos

Slides are here: https://kdt.balaramadurai.net/2026-IIMK-DT/Conclusion.pdf

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-IIMK-DT