Tulika Puri Katyal, the Founder of the Center for Design & Innovation, was interviewed by Fablook, a leading women's lifestyle magazine. The published interview is reproduced here.
FAB: As a serial entrepreneur, what do you find the most exciting about the world of design?
Tulika: The design industry in India is booming like never before. This is an industry whose market is estimated to be in the range of INR 188.32 bn! As an antrepreneur and educator, what interests me is the fact that this industry will need as many as 60,000 skilled personnel to realise its projected potential. Estimates show that only a fifth of the design market is currently tapped.
As someone who understands design, I believe design should be part of our everyday lives. It is a great solution provider for both simple and complex challenges one comes across in daily living. The prospect of positively influencing so many people and contributing towards a better community at large is probably the most exciting part!
FAB: What is the future of this industry?
Tulika: Right now, if you ask someone about design, they will probably list a few age-old design sectors: Architectural Design, Interior Design, Landscape Design, Furniture Design, Fashion Design, Textile design, Jewellery Design, Graphic Design, Animation and New Media Design.
I think the scope of design is so much more. I am a practicing design thinker, and people who train in design thinking can create immense value, revolutionise business, and have a (positive) disruptive effect on the way businesses are planned and operationalised.
So, I think the future of this industry, and many others, lies in expanding the horizon beyond the traditional design sectors to 'design thinking' and looking at design as a problem solving tool, which is fast becoming and will soon be an integral part of any core business in order to galvanise the way businesses are managed. I believe design-led innovation is the future.
FAB: You have recently started a design institute. Tell us a little bit about that.
Tulika: Urbane-The Design Workshop, of which I am Partner, and the IVS School of Design, have come together to start the Center for Design & Innovation (CDI), an entity that provides a complete ecosystem of education, incubation, nurturing and funding to designers, innovators and entrepreneurs; bringing them together to help solve real-world business challenges and create value.
Currently I am travelling all over India and the globe meeting and bringing together like-minded organizations and institutes, who share our vision for the future and want to partner and collaborate on this grand vision of creating a dot on the globe, making India a Design and Innovation hub.
FAB: What motivated you to start this Center?
Tulika: Albert Einstein once said, “If you always do what you always did, you will end up with what you always get.”
The world is changing at an exponential pace – to keep pace, we need to relook at the way we look at design and design education. Many professions that we know of today, may not exist in the next 10 years and many new professions that we haven’t even heard of, will come up. The Center for Design & Innovation has been initiated with the belief that the future of learning, operating and succeeding in any sphere of life will be based on fostering and developing creativity and some basic critical thinking/design thinking skills in a collaborative environment – in essence redefining the ethos of education.
In an increasingly complex and dynamic business environment, the need for an entity that not just teaches, but also connects and handholds you, basically stays with you as a mentor till you scale up and become a credible and sustainable business was the key motivator for setting up CDI. Many entrepreneurs like me wish we had a mentoring organisation – we had to build our businesses from scratch.
FAB: But there are so many business incubation organisations, both in India and abroad. What do you think sets CDI apart?
Tulika: CDI is the only design-to-business (D2B) and business-to-design (B2D) platform in India that focuses on driving innovation through design. Institutes and businesses who have their eye on the Asia-Pacific region and are looking for a platform that draws in all the benefits India offers – including youth entrepreneurs, designers and innovators, an emergent market and a growth-oriented Government, will find CDI a valuable collaborator.
This is why we are challenging the status quo by expanding the scope of design education to design thinking and problem solving – a way of approaching solutions to business problems or challenges guided by design training to create better products, systems, and communities. In this way, fostering not just skilful and technical experts; but more significantly, trained thinkers and problem solvers – placing them centrally in any business planning, strategy and execution for valuable and advantageous outcomes.
Centre for Design and Innovation (CDI) is the one and only platform that provides a complete ecosystem of education, incubation, nurturing and funding to designers, innovators and entrepreneurs, under one umbrella. It will be strategically positioned to be a complete ecosystem that blurs the boundaries between learning and business practice.
FAB: What about our Universities and business schools? Aren't they doing this?
Tulika: Universities and business schools provide students with the knowledge and training. But we believe just training is not enough to qualify the students of today to remain relevant to the markets of tomorrow, especially with technological advancements like AI (Artificial Intelligence) coming in in a big way.
With this, it is very important that novel learning experiences are provided to individuals and businesses, for them to be adept and stay ahead of the curve in this increasingly challenging world environment. Training students to be design thinkers and problem solvers equips them with a skill set that prepares them for the many revolutionary changes the work environment is going to see.
FAB: How will this impact jobseekers or business persons in the coming decades?
Tulika: Many of the jobs we take for granted today will not exist and many new job profiles will come up within the coming decade itself. By training individuals and organizations in critical and design thinking; at CDI, we strive to equip them with a necessary skill set required for both - those looking to set up businesses and those looking for jobs in the near future. CDI will actually make them more amenable to the future global markets.
In its essence, the Center for Design & Innovation will be a platform carrying forward the mandate of democratising design while being an interdisciplinary collaboration platform between the business and the learning/education worlds, where innovators and designers can showcase their work, work directly with businesses, create micro-networks that bring the best of design and innovation together to solve real-world business challenges and create value. The Centre will have flagship teaching programmes around design and innovation that explore and expand the collaborative spaces in Design to Businesses (d2b) and Business to Designers (b2d).
FAB: With such high expectations, how do you manage your personal life and balance it with your professional dreams?
Tulika: I do what most women do: stay calm and multitask! One way in which I have learnt to balance my personal and professional life is to include my children in the excitement at work. We recently had a contest to design a logo for the Center for Design & Innovation where my sons, Aaryan, who is 12 years old, and Shaurya who is 9, participated as well. The idea is to encourage and cultivate creativity and treat them with respect for what they bring to the table. In such small playful ways, I get the support I need and am able to manage various fronts.
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