Set in 2023, the case documents the initiatives of the Safe in India Foundation (SII), a non-profit organisation, that aims to improve workers' safety and social security in India's automobile manufacturing industry. The issue is complex and multifaceted as the industry's deep supply chain has many small and mid-sized factories comprising skilled and unskilled workers. SII's four-pillar programme - supporting workers directly, improving workplace safety in the automotive sector through systemic change, improving healthcare and compensation policy at ESIC, and spreading awareness, especially by empowering workers through knowledge - attempts to foster a safety culture in the industry and among workers. In the six years since it was established, the signs of systemic change to improve worker safety have been noticed. However, SII's leadership team wanted to scale the impact. For that, SII's Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Sandeep Sachdeva, had to consider the strategic options and trade-offs involving key stakeholders that included the automobile brands, the government, and workers, among others.
Ravi Arora, Vice President (Group Innovation), Tata Sons Private Limited, and his Group Innovation team initially faced difficulty when introducing the concept of open innovation to the Tata Group. They tried to ease the staff into embracing it by getting them to share problem statements, learn from other companies which had already adopted it, and form InnoClusters among Tata companies which collaborated in diverse areas. The team subsequently organised monthly thematic eHackathons in which staff could propose ideas to solve business challenges on specific themes posted by senior management. In the course of organising the eHackathons, Ravi's team encountered several issues such as administrative difficulties and mismatched expectations. The central question in this case study is whether eHackathons and internal crowdsourcing in general are employee engagement devices or serious initiatives by organisations to obtain solutions to innovation problems. The question centres around the number of ideas that become full-fledged solutions, since only very few, less that 10 percent, are actually implemented. This begs the question of whether employee sourcing of ideas can ever be an effective source of innovative solutions. Hence the case is titled 'ideas and not solutions' to reflect this vast chasm between idea generation and solution implementation, while still celebrating the winners from each eHackathon.
Set in June 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the case traces the evolution of SensorFlow, an early-stage start-up offering an IoT-powered Energy Management Solution (EMS) to the hospitality sector in Southeast Asia. It documents the founding story and illustrates how the founders, Saikrishnan Ranganathan and Max Pagel, drove the adoption of their innovation by securing a distinctive value proposition and unique business model. SensorFlow's EMS was targeted at the hospitality sector struggling under pressure to reduce energy consumption and operations costs besides meeting sustainability norms. SensorFlow's EMS addressed the gaps in the incumbent solutions with its minimally invasive, less expensive plug-and-play design. In addition, the zero-upfront-cost and pay-as-you-save payment model shortened the sales cycle and accelerated customer acquisition and business growth. However, when the pandemic hit, the growth slowed, and as the long-term implications on the hospitality industry became apparent, the founders had to review their business plans.
Set in 2019, this case illustrates a design thinking intervention programme carried out at the Elite's Smile Specialized Medical Complex in the city of Taif in Saudi Arabia. The programme was part of a doctorate research project undertaken at the Singapore Management University. The case introduces Elite's Smile, a private dental clinic that offers a comprehensive range of services including routine and complex treatments for adults and children. Despite being an established clinic with broad dental expertise and state-of-the-art equipment, Elite's Smile faces great challenges in view of growing competition from new entrants and increasing service expectation from customers. The case discussion encourages the participants to evaluate whether design thinking, a human-centred problem-solving approach, would work in a small-and-medium enterprise (SME) and non-US context. The handout describes the actual intervention programme conducted over six months at Elite's Smile. At the centre of intervention is a training workshop covering the five-phase design thinking process and supporting tools for each phase. Notable improvements were observed at post-intervention in terms of increasing customer satisfaction (as seen in the patient retention and recommendation), a more cooperative work culture, and most importantly, growing income for the clinic. The instructor could use the handout to stimulate further discussion on why design thinking has worked for Elite's Smile.