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Design Thinkers

This story showed up on my LinkedIn feed recently and some folks who went to Stanford d.school (and I happen to have few in my network) were quite snide about the effort. If every 6th grader and above from India comes out into the world a design thinker then the space gets crowded and competitive very quickly. I thought the idea had merit but execution will make all the difference. The road to hell as we know is paved with good intentions. 

“Through this programme, we will be able to train a large number of youngsters, which will eventually help them move forward towards innovation and entrepreneurship,” added Jere, who conceptualised the Smart India Hackathon initiative, claimed as the world’s biggest open innovation model, which teaches the culture of product innovation and problem-solving among students.

There is a scenario where design thinking mills will pop up around the country where all of the benefits will be traded in favor of credentials - specially if they translate into job opportunities. In an ideal world, the kids will learn something of value that opens their minds to thinking about the problems that ail the world in novel ways. 

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