 time whether it was 20 years ago or today, when I walk into a room, the first question that a client asks is, what can you do that's innovative and what's new? How many of you have been asked this question, kuch naaya dikao, kuch innovative batao? Right? Yeh, kya hai? Right? I mean, sorry for those who don't understand Hindi, but you know, what the, you know, I can't even swear. So, what is this man here? Kya hai? I mean, really, honestly, for God's sake, how do you expect me to come and show something new every time? And your questions are X, Y, Z, A, B, C, D, old, right? You don't ask me new questions. So, how can I give you some new answers? But anyways, I am expected and so are you to show up as innovative. So, this, this session is, okay, how do you do it? Now that you have to do it because subpo bonus time here, right? I want my bonus. I want to get promoted. So, if you want that, we have to turn up as innovative. So, this is my attempt. It could be totally wrong. These are my personal guidelines, okay? But because I come from Microsoft, I have to say that I have to say Microsoft. So, Microsoft 1, Microsoft 2, Microsoft 3 because they've sponsored me here. But these are really personal things. This is what I bring to the table or what I try to do to help myself or my team think to be innovative. So, we, as I said, we start with questions. So now, this is the first question which is not related to the question I asked myself. But this is a question to help you think about the question. So, the first question is, why wasn't the wheel invented before? Don't take notes. This means nothing. Okay? It means nothing. But why wasn't the wheel invented before? So, a little bit of history because I love history. So, the sailing boat was invented about 2,000 years before the wheel, 2,000 years before. Metal alloys were invented 600 years before the wheel. Why did it take so long to invent the wheel? You know, when the wheel was invented, 1500 BC, right? But ships were sailing 3,000 BC. Why did it take so long? Any ideas? Any ideas? Need. Need. Okay? All right? Any other idea? Or they were no, they were alternatives. Really? Okay? They were, all right? No roads. No roads were there. I think that's interesting. Costly, interesting. These are all, these are all good answers. But the designer's answer was, and if this works again, it's because a wheel is not a circular object. Okay? Just, just bear with me. A wheel is a stationary object between, you know, a stationary object with two spinning, rotating objects at the side. A wheel on its own does nothing. You need a platform attached to a wheel. You get what I'm trying to say? There's a platform attached to a wheel. So your designer tha, he had to think about stability, right? How many of you understand Hindi when I move into Hindi? Anyone, anyone who just doesn't get, if you don't get it, if I move into Hindi, just tell me, all right? I'll, I'll, I'll shift. Sorry. Apologies. But, you know, I've come after four years to India, so I won't, you know, I suddenly slip into Hindi. But the thing is that design, some designer had to think about something stationary between two spinning, rotating wheels. So that is, that is rule number one. So as designers, we have to think about the opposite. We have to think about something else. That was one. The second thing was, as someone mentioned, right, there were no roads. There were roads, right? But they were, someone had to discover something called the axle. So it was built, an axle is really, you know, you needed metal alloys. So there were a series of innovations that needed to happen before you could think about the wheel, right? But for designers, the main thing is, or the learning is, that if you want to really innovate, right, you have to think about the exact opposite, right? Message, message okay on this, right? So let's look at the next one. So when I was young, I grew up in Nagpur, right? And we were taught poetry. I love poetry. And the poem that I will always remember, I think it was in my fifth standard that we learned about, you know, he wandered lonely as a cloud. I said, where is a cloud lonely in India, right? When we have one soon, we have clouds, right? Otherwise there are no clouds, right? There are little whiffs here and there, but lonely as a cloud. How does a poet think about adding a word lonely with cloud, right? How do they think about something like this? Have you experienced this, that you're listening to poetry? Yeah, you know, you're listening to a film song, and then they've said something, you know, that is like just amazing. Not like nowadays, the songs are kind of crazy, but, you know, Jandubam does not really seem to be an interesting juxtaposition. But given that someone's thinking like that, they're making connections, right? How do you think that these poets do something like this? So we always think about that. And the answer is not by brainstorming, right? No poet, no poet, no inventor does this by brainstorming. Have you ever seen anything happen in a brainstorm? Anything, right? Why do we brainstorm? Yeah, that's the most tremendous waste of time. But we all brainstorm, and I'm guilty too. I call this brainstorming. We don't do anything there. Anyways, but what we need to do is to take a walk, right? So you want to innovate, take a walk. So I was telling my boss, he said, Jaya, innovation quotient badau, you know, increase the innovation quotient of the team. I said, all right, let's all go for a walk. No meetings, no meetings in a meeting room with everything closed. Look at this. How do you think we can innovate in a room like this? Right, so I said, let's take a walk. So not literally, but yeah, we should be walking. We should be out there. We should be experiencing things with people. So immerse yourself in the experience. So don't talk about it, just do that stuff. Go and see what it means. Then the third question, I mean, we have that, right? Are there monsters under the bed, right? So are there, how many of you believe that there are monsters under the bed? Chalo, yeah, sometime, yep. I believe, right? Sometime in your life have you not believed that there's a monster under your bed? Booth ne hai, right? Dark alley meh madja, don't go into the dark, right? There's something, booth bungla. How many of us have done that, right? Right, all of us, right? Shani ka naam lo, and I do it in London today, right? I don't go on the street. So why do we believe in this? We believe in this because, because if everyone believes in it, it becomes true. If no one believes in it, it's not true. And the biggest, biggest example of this is cricket, right? Virat Kohli, I went into the mall, there was Virat Kohli everywhere. Why is he everywhere? Why is he selling things that, you know, because you believe in him? If he makes an expression in his school, everybody suddenly, I went into this college to recruit and all the guys, boys, same hairstyle, if that, if I look like this, I'm gonna have it. So innovation happens not because of the truth, all the time. Innovation happens if you can tell a story that's convincing. So, in short, three things, three things, okay? The first one, what really needs to be solved? Second, what new connection has been made? And then third, is there a believable story? Now Harsh, who is there, I'm sorry, I'm calling him out, but kya kahaani batata, okay? And you should hear his, some, you know, next time I want, and I think he's speaking, you should listen to him talk. So, you know, we started out very young and we would go, we had nothing, we were a startup, we had nothing, right? Nothing, but we would go and sit in front of these huge banks and huge clients and go and sell, and they bought that story. And we were very innovative, we were very innovative because of these. So these three elements have served me well. They may not be your stories or they may be other things and I'll be really, really keen to hear how you go about being innovative, right? But for me, these are the three questions. So, how am I doing in terms of time? No, timekeeper. Yeah, I was gonna demonstrate a few things, but would you, should I show you a few slides or do you want to ask me questions? Someone likes the slides, okay. So, this is all great and fine, right? So how do you apply it to very boring questions? So let's take the first one. Because I'm in Microsoft, many times we're asked to solve productivity problems, right? Productivity, but how? Efficiency, effectiveness, and engagement. Three things that need to go up. Do that. So everyone starts talking about it. So when you talk about effectiveness, right? So how do I go from point A to point B? Or how do I see that the number of use, the number of cases passing through a case management go faster, cheaper, better? How many of you have had to design systems like that? Okay, good. Anyone with who had to design systems which were form filling, registration? Do click, right? Three click, right? You can do this in two clicks, do this in three clicks. So this is efficiency, right? So we focus on the two clicks or three clicks. So we tend to focus there. But what I tell my team or what I do is to say, keep what can be thrown away, right? So don't look at the two or three clicks. Don't look at the efficiency. Where can I gain efficiency? Look at it the other way, right? So let me give you another example. This is not mine. This is someone else, but it really helped me. Everyone says there's a water problem. How many of you live here or in Hyderabad or wherever in India, right? Is there a water supply problem? Is there water shortage, right? What do you think the problem is? Fresh water. Fresh water problem here. The rivers, there's less water in the rivers. Too many human beings. So what do we do? Fresh water harvesting, collect rainwater, don't waste water, correct? But do you know that the planet is 75% water, right? So there is no real water problem. What's the problem? Salinity, it's salty. We have a salt problem, not a water problem. So we have to crack the salt problem. Does that make sense? Right, but what do we do? We focus on water harvesting. You know, rainwater harvesting, let's conserve. I'm not saying don't do that. But how many of us are thinking about solving a saltiness problem? So when we design, we need to think in that way. So what is the exact problem that we're trying to solve? Right, so this is a demonstration of that. Another one. How do we establish a new connection? So I think this one I really like. This I really like. More and more, as we work across the globe, clients come to us and say, like yesterday's workshop we had, how do I improve my credit card application process? Or how do I improve, you know, how do I get more people to buy my product? How do I make my product more engaging? And more and more the answer is, make your product invisible, okay? Make the technology invisible. So let me give you an example. How many of you remember your mobile phone? Remember, you remember it? Or it's always there with you, right? Do you see yourself without your mobile phone, right? Because the mobile phone is now you. So in some cases your mobile phone is completely transparent to you because it is you, right? I have my mobile phone with me all the time. You will not go out without it, right? You will be conscious of it, but it's not your mobile phone, right? So the reason for this is because as it becomes closer to you it becomes transparent. We take things that are close to us for granted. So if you want to make a connection, make it closer so that it becomes invisible, okay? So how many of you smoke cigarettes? Come on, anyone, that's it? I thought everyone smokes in Indiana. So when people smoke cigarettes, right? You don't have to tell them to buy a cigarette. Why? Because it's a part of who you are, right? So when I go out partying I'm smoking, right? No one has to tell me, it happens, right? So it's a natural thing. So this natural thing of making it your own does not require sales. So innovation is making it close or making it in, right? Making it transparent, that's the new connection. So an actual thing is insurance. In India do you have this? In the UK or in the US? If you choose to put a small little piece on the car, right, which tracks how you're driving the car, your insurance premiums go down. Does that happen in India? Okay, so everywhere in Europe, everywhere in the US, you will get a better deal if you say I'm gonna put this thing there. Now what this little piece of, it's an IoT piece, what it does is it tracks how you're driving. It tracks how you park, whether you're safe, whether you stay within your limits. And by doing this, by sharing this data, it comes back to the user through better insurance premiums. This has resulted in something called micro insurance. So if I'm someone who's getting into an Uber going from destination one to destination two, I can get insurance, right, just for that period immediately. Or I don't need to say, okay, when a car is, it's a Rolls Royce, no, I don't have a car, but I have a Rolls Royce, and so I need so much of insurance. No, it depends upon the driver. So this is the kind of new connection. So let's get rid of the technology, let's get rid of any interface. So one of the things that's happening and is going to come is that there is no interface, right? So voice, I mean the one thing I would say is really, really focus on voice. Because in the next few years, you'll see there will be no interface. It'll be voice. And the third one, which I found very interesting, right, was Me Too. Now the reason why I found Me Too interesting was because it gave voice to something that was already existing. And I'm not trying to make this into an issue here. I'm saying how it surfaces, how it happens. Innovation happens automatically when someone said the timing is right, right? It just happens. So what I wanted to leave behind with you with this particular slide is that if you have to realize that the innovation is inside you, right, so if you ask yourself your questions and if you trust yourself, it'll come out, right? For me, it works best by asking those questions and by waiting till the last minute, right? Really the last minute. I like to work under pressure. But I have people in my team who take, you know, to take months, they take walks and then they will do things. So for me, it's these three applications of how to be innovative. I also have, but I'm not gonna do that, a few client examples. But I'll give you one client example, Real Madrid. How many of you follow football? I know it's a wrong question, but okay, Real Madrid. So Real Madrid has about 450 million fans worldwide. They didn't know who these fans were. And they wanted to, so the club realized that their club did not belong to the footballers who were very, very expensive. They belonged to the fans. And so they needed to have a way by which to talk to the fans. So how do you think people would normally do it? Newsletter, website, email marketing, Orca, Facebook page, right? Orca, what else? Twitter, something like that, right? What they did was to say, at every match, our stadium is not the 80,000 people in that stadium. Our stadium are people who are watching. And so what they did was they gave their fans an option to get a slate, a small slate. This slate was like a real-time interface which showed all the lights light up when a match was going on. So if the match was going on, say, in Spain, everybody who was watching was lit up on that slate. Nothing great, it was actually in, it was like an analysis dashboard on Power BI. Which showed whoever was active. And so they showed 450 million fans that there were 450 million fans who were actually watching that match. They made them visible. And by making that visible, suddenly people started pouring in and talking and using hashtags. And people started saying, recognize me. I am a fan, right? So it was the reverse. Rather than trying to talk to them, they said, you identify yourself and come and talk to us. So it was the other way around. So if you want to really help engagement or drive design thinking, remember, I think the biggest, biggest way to be innovative is to think the other way around. You know, so that song, if you want to go to Japan, if you understand China, it's a good thing. It's a good thing. So if you want to go to Tokyo, then do go to Africa. It'll really work. So that's it from me. Any questions? I'm in time as well. How nice. No questions? Please feel free to ask any questions. We have a few minutes. I went with two options. The option that the client asked me to do or my manager said, and I would give the challenger option, right? And in some cases, it worked. So I went with both. I did, I worked harder. So in one way, it was not just the client. This is also what I want to do. And then sometimes the client accepted it and said, you know, I never thought about it this way. So show two options. It takes time. I mean, I'm not saying there's any easy answer. It takes time. But what has worked for me, I don't know whether it'll work for you is persistence, right? Really being persistent about it. And two is to show options and give a rational reason why. In some cases, if you have some money, to go and test market it and say, they go. Look, but still you will fail. It's, you know, as I said, it takes time. It's not something that's going to happen overnight. But you have to be committed to it. You have to be passionate about it to do it. I know I didn't answer your question. I can see it, but I can't help. This is the only answer I have. Yes, there is no magic, magic way to do it. Oh, there's so many. I mean, there is, so there is a, there is a company. I can't name the company, but there's a company which is into smoking, right? Manufacturer's Cigarettes. It has realized that it cannot be in the cigarette business because cigarettes are a bad thing to do, right? So about two years ago, they said, how do we, you know, what do we do? Right, so what do we do? So they came up with something called new generation products. So new generation products are products where you don't smoke, but you, there's vaping, which everybody's aware of, and there's something called heat not burn. So where you take nicotine and you put it into a particular device. Now, the implications of this for the company is that it is no longer a cigarette manufacturer, it's a device manufacturer, right? Can you imagine the significance of going from manufacturing a cigarette to a device? So they suddenly became, you know, they've now have to compete with Apple because you want the device to look as pretty. If it is ugly, you're not, you're not going to use it. It has to be functional. So one of the things was to say, how do you then, it's like sending, it's like sending one seventh of the planet about a billion people to the gym regularly. That's the kind of conversion that we have to do. So this is an example of a real life challenge that comes our way. Another example is a big multinational which produces skincare, right? So what it realized is that nobody wants to get a general skincare, you know, general lotion. Everybody wants it, you know, but my skin is different or, you know, I live in a different place or I've got a stressful life. So there's something called a production line of one. You'll see that just as I said, voice is the next thing. There's something called production line of one, which means you have to have a way to design for one person at the end of the, you know, end of it. So how do you do at scale production, you know, production lines of one? So that's another thing that we are working on. The third thing that we are working on which I really, really enjoy is something called inversing the internet, which is saying that today when you do Facebook, Google, Instagram, all your data is with them, they package it, sell it, monetize it, right? But actually, that's my data. So imagine that if you put up a picture on Instagram and it's damn good, it's very good, and there's somebody who wants to buy it to have the ability for you to earn money from your own data. So how do you, you know, have your own data and Facebook or Twitter or search will come and take that data from you. So that's another thing that we are working on. Thank you.