Bye-bye Rail Container, Hello FlexBox!

While my journey with human-centered business design may have begun at Rotman, I was determined to not let it end at Rotman. I was determined to continue my pursuit of designing better solutions, and jumped at any and every opportunity to be able to practice my design chops (is that even a term? :P)! Fortunately, I'm not alone in that boat, and when three amazingly talented classmates and I happened to chance upon an interesting challenge to redesign rail freight, we jumped pretty high! The innovation competition challenged us to explore how might we extend network capability and improve the user experience for the UK rail freight industry.

We (Team Novus Capsa) were pretty stoked about the challenge, but we had no idea about rail freight whatsoever! Also, it was kind of tricky to figure out the freight space in the UK while we were sitting in Toronto, Canada! So, what do you do when you don't know something? You research! We reached out to brilliant academics researching urban planning, real estate economics, operational efficiencies, and marketing strategies. We spoke with seasoned professionals who shared their insights from sectors such as shipping, logistics, postal services and industry analysts. We chatted with enterprises, business owners and individuals who had previously, are currently, or may use freight or freight forwarding services at some point in the future. We are incredibly grateful for the knowledge, experiences and insights that these generous individuals shared with us, and they helped us deep-dive into the world of freight.

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With the FlexBox Prototype - who says Lego is just for kids? :P

Then, last, but not the least, we looked at the freight container itself, and that's when we realized the box had changed the space of shipping and trade. While the humble box had changed a lot, it remained relatively unchanged since its invention. Well, if we wanted to change the current state of rail freight, we had to change the box. So, that's what we did! We brainstormed, ideated, prototyped and repeated until we were out of Lego blocks!

Eventually we conceptualized a redesign of the box – "FlexBox" – where the box comes to you! It would be a unique freight solution for small and medium enterprises, with door-to-door service. Our concept was to change the box, which would change rail freight, and redefine the rail user experience. Curious? Take a peek at our concept solution, and tell me what you think!  :)

Rotman Design Challenge 2013

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The Business Design Club's Executive Team with Dean Roger Martin at the Rotman Design Challenge 2013

After experiencing what was undoubtedly one of the highlights of first year, with the Rotman Design Challenge 2012 (RDC 2012), I was determined to pay it forward when the 2013 edition came along.  While the competition itself only took place in March of this year, fervent preparations for RDC 2013 began in earnest shortly after our first year came to a close.  From pitching to prospective clients, to liaising with our competition sponsor, to liaising with generous partners, to scouting locations, to inviting judges, to inviting speakers, to developing learning program, to managing internal and external teams, to managing multiple communication channels, to finally putting together "one of the most awesome case competitions ever" (testimonial by an enthusiastic participant!), and I was very fortunate to be a part of the awesome team behind the magic.

As the RDC Sponsor, Target challenged teams to find an innovative solution to, "How can Target leverage it’s 'Expect More. Pay Less®' brand promise and it’s mantra of 'Design for All' to become and be recognized as a leading company in sustainability?"  Our eager participants came from schools across Canada, United States and Europe (we went international in just our third year!), from Aalto University, California College of the Arts, Darden School of Business, IIT Institute of Design, Ivey School of Business, McCombs School of Business, Ontario College of Art & Design, Sauder School of Business, Sloan School of Management, and of course, the Rotman School of Management.  125 eager business designers fully immersed themselves in the challenge, using business and design techniques and frameworks, to create amazingly creative concepts inspired by unique user insights.  And their presentations resonated the words of our keynote speaker, Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, offering a creative and "productive combination of analytical & intuitive thinking" to move the business world forward.  Innovation was the theme of the day, with Daniel Duty from Target saying how, "engaging with their guests and building brand love, requires constant innovation."  Kate Heiny also offered words of wisdom for our eager participants, "Dream big, make it simple, make it look good, and you should be set!"

The Judges did not have an easy task as they deliberated extensively (timing one of the rooms was highly enlightening - so much wisdom & insight from our Judges!) to select the final 5 teams from IIT Design, OCAD, MIT Sloan and Rotman (It was a proud day for Rotmanites when two of their teams went into the final round!).  The final round judges had an even trickier task as they reviewed, questioned and debated, before awarding first place to 'Team Meta' from IIT Design, second place to 'We Almost Forgot Our Passports' from MIT Sloan, and third place to 'P-Type' from Rotman!  Yay!  :D  

The RDC wasan incredibly exhausting, yet amazingly exciting experience, and I particularly enjoyed meeting with eager business designers from different schools.  In short, the RDC was like a design melting pot, where like-minded individuals came together, to share their curiosity, creativity, and commitment to innovation, and I can't wait to see what the next year's team has in store for Rotman and business design!

Business Design Hackathon

There are many reasons why the Rotman MBA is an awesome experience, but I think one of the key reasons is because it teaches you to think and do.  It's not enough to just learn something helpful and new, if you don't know how to put it into practice. With that in mind, Rotman DesignWorks hosted its first ever Business Design Hackathon, and they got things off to a creative start with students submitting 60-second video pitches applying to be a part of this challenge.  

Kiran Sajwani - Business Design Hackathon - Video Application Music Credit: 'Modern Theme Music' by iMovie / "1901" by Phoenix Music Content used for nonprofit educational purposes (USC, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107).

Over the course of three days spread out over two weeks, we used design thinking principles to solve a live problem for the Rotman Marketing Team.  The overall challenge pertained to, "How might we redesign the digital student experience at Rotman?" covering three different areas - Internal Communications, Ambient Experience, and Non-Academic Student Culture.  Our team tackled the Ambient (Physical) Experience, with the more focused challenge of, "How might we help students be more informed when it comes to initiatives on the Rotman campus?"  We went out and interviewed students in the full-time and part-time programs, to gain deeper insights into their views on learning about school initiatives, good & bad experiences, and the role of different technologies in their lives.  The helpful creatives at DesignWorks helped us to synthesize our findings, journey map, ideate and prototype, although just when you think you're done, it's time to iterate!  While iterations can be mildly frustrating, they're inherent as part of the business design process, and are stepping stones on the way to helping you build better, more effective & relevant solutions.  We capped off this experience by presenting our multi-faceted proposed solution, the Rotman Huddle, to the Rotman Marketing Team and other Senior Rotman Directors.  Here's a peek at our solution's intro!  

The Business Design Hackathon was a great way to combine my passion, energy and curiosity, with a collaborative, experimental mindset, to gain practice in applying the principles of Business Design, and have some good fun along the way!

Halfway Through Second Year!

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything, and although it's been a little quiet on the blog front, it's been really quite hectic behind the scenes. The first half of December was occupied with wrapping up the Fall Semester, then the second half of December was occupied with an exhaustingly good trip, then the first half of January was occupied with a fantastic Winter Intensive Course, and now, the Spring Semester is off to a snowy start! While there will be more posts to follow on the events of late December onwards, let me get to the subject line... Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in mid-December 2012, I completed half of my Second Year, which officially had me at 75% done with my MBA! That's an exciting, but scary thought... I really only have a couple more months of school until I'm out of here? But I really like school!

Being in Second Year has its perks... You've gotten used to the pace of the intensive MBA program and all its components, you've settled in to the city, you've figured out all the shortcuts to school, and you've figured out where's the best place to give in to your cookie cravings! That said, it's still pretty hectic & intense, but it's just more manageable. The same goes for the courses I took during the Fall Term; intense, challenging & demanding, but stimulating, exciting & manageable.

Professor Brian Golden takes you into the challenges that prevail after you've planned that grand strategy in "Strategic Change & Implementation." Given people’s natural resistance to change, part of me wondered if it was actually possible to teach people how do they implement strategic changes. We were taken through a variety of cases which illustrated leadership, alignment, strategy, structure, systems, influencing change, knowledge management, and even storytelling. I also loved being exposed to these variety of concepts in a variety of forms, from your traditional business school cases & readings, to the Golden Bear Award-Winning "12 Angry Men," to the entertaining "Jamie's School Dinners."

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Professor Dan Ariely with Professor Nina Mazar's Behavioral Economics class

Professor Nina Mazar takes you through the different aspects of human irrationality in "Behavioral Economics." Unlike its much older brother - traditional economics - which explores the idea that people are “capable of making the right decisions” for themselves, Behavioral Economics explores “the (quite intuitive) idea that people do not always behave rationally and that they often make mistakes in their decisions.” I really enjoyed exploring how behavioral economics could be utilized to better understand the user, by better understanding their decisions related to options, choices, payments, fines, saving, commitment, behavior changes, reciprocity, morals, ethics, and dishonesty, and then applying that knowledge to two live cases. The highlight of the course was probably the Behavior Economics Fireside Chat we had with Professor Dan Ariely, one of the leading behavioral economists of our time, and it was fascinating to hear about his experiments, and his discoveries about "The Honest Truth about Dishonesty."

Professor Alexander Manu takes you into a completely different direction with "Innovation, Foresight & Business Design." He challenges you to think outside the box, and use non-traditional approaches to solving unseen problems, or unidentified opportunities of the future. This class isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I personally really enjoyed learning about innovation as a behavior, foresight perspectives, new context mapping, disruption, behavior spaces, experience mapping, and using the ambiguity in the world around us, to find and capitalize on its hidden opportunities. Our group - 'The Itty-Bitty, Farm and City, Witty Ditty, Nitty-Gritty, Dog and Kitty, Pretty Little Kiddy Show' - took our learnings through a three-phased process of Discovery, Expansion, and Application, eventually culminating with a business pitch for our idea.

So, that's my view on the courses I took in the Fall Term. Although they were definitely challenging, they were eye-opening in trying to expand my views, and exploring different avenues in solving problems and capturing opportunities. Stay tuned for my next post, where I cover the Winter Intensive Term! Take care, and stay clear of the snowstorms!