As the sole 'Design Strategist' in the organization, with a legal and operational background, I was supporting the Director of Strategy for the organization, to chalk out the Indian Startup Ecosystem, understand its growing challenges and needs, and identify how the organization could address these needs.
Roles played: Researcher, Workshop Facilitator, Trainer, Strategist and Enabler
The project aimed to leverage the key strengths of the different research centers, accelerators and incubators of the school, located in two different states.
As the *School of Business struggled to keep up with challenges of the pandemic, it became imperative to restructure its innovation and entrepreneurship strategy for the next four years.
Design Strategist
Apr 2020 - Sep 2020
Hyderabad
Poised for More
B-school program strategy
Discover
Phase Focus
Identify and prioritize the engagement with different stakeholders of the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.
My Role
In hindsight, the process involved conducting collaborative virtual sessions with the team, to brainstorm and map out the stakeholders.
Virtually, this process was time-taking.
We then followed with a stakeholder analysis, to understand direct and indirect stakeholders, basis current engagement level with client. As we proceeded, I did some quick run-throughs with the team on conducting open-ended interviews as well.
Define
Phase Focus
Mapping challenges found for each stakeholder type, based on the stages of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Identified: More than 50 challenges,
Synthesized: 6 focus areas to design programs
My Role
Conducting a Competitive Analysis to map different types of programs organized by different kinds of educational institutions globally. The idea was to understand how the 6 focus areas could be converted into stronger offerings for the different stakeholders.
Identifying Positioning of the Client, identifying three institutional strengths:
Knowledge Creation,
Dissemination,
Research and Implementation
Challenge Simplified
-Understand stakeholders of the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem for the school,
-Identify challenges for each stakeholder, and
-Craft programs for collective benefit of all stakeholders
The Blueprint made way for 33 new categories of programs for the organization to design.
Strategy Development: Stage 1
Led Design for Organizational Service Blueprint identifying:
- challenges across different stages of entrepreneurship,
- needs of the ecosystem that the client could fulfill,
- types of interventions needed,
- level of involvement by required at each stage of entrepreneurship by different stakeholders
and more.
Poised For More!
Program Name
Poised for More was an ode to the strength the organization held as a team - the attitude to never give up and to keep pushing to serve people.
Strategy
Human-centric, addressing numerous stakeholder challenges, addressing Culture and Awareness,Capacity Development, Market Access, Infrastructure, Policy, Capital, and more
My Role
Researcher, Facilitator, Trainer, Designer, Strategist - wearing multiple hats, I aimed to learn from my team and provide support in every way possible. Designing internal workshops, recruiting stakeholders to interview, synthesizing information received to insights, to chalk out program strategy.
Final Programs
33 new programs were designed for four years, tending to stakeholders such as potential and existing entrepreneurs, investors, not-for-profit organizations,
MNCs, corporates,
government bodies: local, state and central, financial institutions, and finally,
universities and research institutions, beyond the institution itself.
