Young Designers 2011

		Young Designers 2011
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Shruti Poddar | shrutipoddar0812@gmail.com

A Bridge Connecting ITI Students and Industry

Strategic Design Management | PGDPD
Guide: Shashank Mehta
Sponsor: Gurukul Online Learning Solutions (GOLS), Mumbai

Keywords
Skill education
Opportunity mapping
Business plan
Enterprise creation

The project aimed to get a clearer understanding of a design manager’s role in articulating needs, problem-solving, identifying business opportunity and the importance of design in the process of value creation. The chosen sector was skill education and the project involved understanding its system and functioning and finally coming up with a business opportunity for the client.

India is known globally for its supply of manpower. At any point of time, an estimated five million Indians work abroad. With its demographic advantage and a large pool of speakers of English, India can well provide the solution to the global skills’ shortage problem. This project involved a set of users, including students from Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), various diploma courses, private vocational schools and educators, industry representatives and parents. Skill development and entrepreneurship were identified as drivers for economic growth.

What is needed is a holistic approach to address the problem of skill shortage within the country. India has a lot of potential to thrive on enterprise creation and encourage leadership in business development. The system of skill education is large and complex. It was important to understand each part, step by step, to bring about clarity. Data-mapping, synthesis and structuring helped me come up with alternative, innovative and more human solutions.

The deliverable was a business opportunity for the company as a proposed service, its usage model, business model and plan.

Through this project I have realized that revisiting the field, taking regular feedbacks and iterating the solutions helps in developing a robust system, especially for the situations when you feel that you are ‘stuck’. I have also learnt the importance of maintaining the balance between GOLS needs and stakeholder needs.