JOIN USThe journey from designing cars to design thinking
"I want to be on stage every day of my life"
Saveen Hegde wrote down this goal early in his career. Between 2017 - 2019, he was on stage for around 180 days each year, which is almost every alternate day.
Saveen took the stage as a speaker, an improv artiste and most importantly, as a design thinking specialist. But no matter which role he chose to assume on a particular day, his motto of ‘Live, Laugh, Learn’ was often at the core of it all.
Design Thinking is an extremely human-centric, solution-based approach to solving complex problems. It is a process that calls for practical and creative problem-solving.
It encourages organisations to focus on the people they are creating for and understand their needs, leading to better products and services.
Before Saveen ventured into design thinking, life unfolded along a predictable track. He graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree from PESIT, followed by a job as a design engineer in General Motors. And while there was a great passion for automobiles, he soon began to feel like he was "caught in a box".
After his transition to an MBA didn’t go as planned, Saveen went the start-up way — like every other engineer. “I wanted to take a risk and not get stuck. I realised we do so many things in a disinterested manner, and I thought, ‘Why should learning be so boring? It can be interesting, engaging and create an impact.’ That was my holistic idea.”
That was the beginning of his journey as a corporate trainer, helping businesses with their learning and development challenges. But while he loved being on stage and engaging people, he had never done it professionally. So between 2011 - 16, Saveen juggled dual lives, conducting corporate training programmes on the weekdays and participating in theatre and Toastmasters on the weekends.
“I started liking Toastmasters because it gave me the stage to practice public speaking, people who could teach me and a peer learning forum. From having zero stage experience in 2011, I went on to become one of the top 10 public speakers amongst 34,000 competitors from across the globe in the 2017 world championship finals!” Saveen beams.
It was a life-changing experience that gave him the confidence to make a complete career switch. But he wasn’t done taking risks just yet.
Harvard stint
Around 2015, he stumbled upon the concept of design thinking in a book. He did his research, saved up all his money and flew to the US for Harvard Business School’s design thinking course. “It was a short-term executive course but I got to work on some interesting projects. D-Thinking was a perfect balance of creativity and structure, chaos and order and it aligned with who I am and what I'd been doing all my life,” he says.
Once he returned, Saveen started Unbox Experience, a creative consulting company in Bengaluru.
Two years ago, Saveen decided to move from learning and development to business-problem solving.
“From mere corporate training, we moved to a corporate transformation programme. As the information era gives way to the creativity era, leaders will need to build D-Thinking as a conscious skill,” says Saveen.
Through consultative approaches and ethnographic research, Saveen applies the five stages of design thinking — discover, define, ideate, experiment and evolve — to find out the issues and design a customised framework for organisations to solve their real-world business challenges.
Right from employee engagement to vision building, learning and development, business continuity planning, communication conflict, situational leadership, innovation and creativity, D-Thinkers tackle a variety of problems.
Continuous learning
What excites Saveen is the opportunity to continuously learn about business problems from the diverse companies he works with. From the largest consumer brand, the largest technology company in India to a baking company, Saveen and his team have covered 17 different industries in the last two and a half years alone.
Today, several institutions, including IIMs, offer certificate courses in Design Thinking. A few of them are also offering it through a tie-up with foreign universities.
Saveen’s ability to throw in bits of magic, humour and improv to keep his audience engrossed and weave showmanship into his programmes have made him a prominent name in D-Thinking in India.
Moreover, gamification has seeped into the entire process of innovation, design thinking and storytelling now. Talking about one such gamified programme of theirs, he explains, “We divide learners into teams and make it like an IPL match and give them points for showing creative behaviour. We have a weekly live leaderboard and a trophy too. So there's constant competition for doing something good. And the energy is crazy.”
As businesses try to stay afloat in the aftermath of the pandemic, D-Thinkers like him are adapting the gamified simulation experience to a digital platform. “We have created a toolkit that is half physical and half digital. The future is a blended approach and we aim to create something meaningful for our learners,” Saveen says.
Mapping Niches is a fortnightly series that sheds light on careers that are off the beaten track, through the eyes of professionals working in a particular field