Open Day with S P Jain
On Sunday, 23rd July 2017, I was fortunate to attend the Open Day at Regus hotel conducted by S P Jain School of Global Management. The Open Day is an event where sessions are conducted for prospective students on topics of interest.
This year, it featured sessions on Decision making and Design Thinking by two top international faculty and experts in their respective fields — Dr. Christopher Abraham and Professor C J Meadows.
The first session by Dr. Abraham covered one of the most important yet underappreciated processes of not only the corporate world, but also everyday life — Decision making. In his talk, the professor took the audience through interesting videos and examples to show how we as people are prone to biases and irrational decisions. The talk further went on to show how the brain could be trained to take better decisions. As an example, Dr. Abraham said how he went from being a chain smoker who smoked 6 packs a day to quitting by rewiring the brain.
While the first session gave more of an introspective insight, the second entailed taking inspiration from unexpected places. In her session on Design Thinking, Prof. C J Meadows spoke on how lateral innovation helped the world’s most innovative companies to outperform the rest. She gave examples of how the perfect solution to some real world problem were found in unrelated fields.
In her talk, Professor Meadows emphasised on how design starts with addressing a need and then moves on to finding the right technology. She further explained how in today’s age of global connectivity and innovation, the way forward lies in interconnection of different domains.
It was a great event that was eye opening for everyone present.