Design Thinking Course critique

This is an attempt to condense the learnings from the Design Thinking course at McCombs Business School during Fall 2018. It has indeed been a very refreshing experience, unlike any traditional MBA class and has provided a new perspective of a customer-oriented approach to solving business problems. The course and especially the group project helped …

Ethics in marketing

It is a huge moral dilemma that marketing folks face: to some extent, marketing is all about manipulating people to maximise profits for your organisation. Take for example coca-cola - the company has been able to capture the minds of people and been able to manipulate people into consuming copious amounts of sugared soda that …

Fountainhead: Contrasting Individualism and Collectivism through compelling storytelling

I recently read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and was instantly drawn upon the powerful message that it conveyed and also the intricate interweaving of multiple narratives that all reinforced the contrast between individualism and collectivism. That contrast was undoubtedly the dominant theme in the book and I felt the author did a great job …

Creativity and innovation

There appears to be no dearth of ideas and literature around the concept of creativity and innovation. Many great minds, who have been hailed for their brilliance and creativity have shared their views on the theme. "Creativity is the residue of time wasted", said Albert Einstein. Steve Jobs famously declared that "creativity is just connecting …

Media Discourse across US: Visualizing qualitative data

As an international student, I was curious to find out the similarities/differences in the local conversations across the United States. Having been in Austin, I had observed the public discourse around the upcoming elections and the impassioned political campaign of Beto. When starting with the assignment, I was hoping to see similar trends across different …

Empathy Map

The objective of this assignment was to come up with an empathy map for iGen and millennials primarily based on personal experience and based on publicly available research/articles based on this theme. This would be the first step in creating an aggregated view within the team, based on similarities and differences among different perceptions.

Journey Mapping

This is an exploration of the planning of a family trip by one of my friends to an offbeat destination known for coffee plantations in India. The trip was planned as an annual family getaway as the family members were usually rather busy in their working lives. So when a long weekend synced on everyone's …

Creating memorable experiences

I believe experiences are a great way to augment traditional selling processes and create value for both the seller and buyer. One of the experiences that were instrumental in making me realize this was when I was shopping for my parent's 25th wedding anniversary. It not only ended being a very memorable gift for my …

Experiments with Building Empathy: Generative Research

This is part of an experiment to learn how to build empathy with users. A series of activities were performed with 2 willing participants (who happen to be my roommates) to understand the things that matter to them and how they interact with the digital ecosystem. The results/insights from the experiment are documented through this …

My persona: The idealist