Education – Shilpbodh

In last two decades, world has witnessed an explosion in terms of new technology leading to innovative technology driven business models. Suddenly there is a realisation that workforce skills need to be in tandem with the new technology and new businesses. It is gradually dawning to practitioners that this is not one-time transformative change which the industry is witnessing today but this change is going to stay on…………meaning every few years the demand for newer skill sets is going to come and one needs to stay up-to-date to continue to be relevant. This is creating immense pressure on educational institutions to supply freshers that can be relevant to industries given their changing demands. This becomes more complicated given the fact that over the years, the industry has already felt the gap between what was being produced by the educational institutions and what was needed by the industry.

Associated with this change, there is another very different perspective that is going almost unnoticed. Business model innovations give rise to a very different kind of business problems. They are no more same as most of us have traditionally seen in our corporate lives. This requires a very different breed of professionals to address such problems. Traditionally, the belief had been that functionally trained professionals (like MBAs with specialisation in Marketing, Finance, Operations, HR etc.) are good to solve the problems in their respective areas. However, with functional boundaries fast diminishing, the problem no more belongs to a particular function. In last couple of decades, we started realising that these are cross functional issues and hence the emphasis had been on forming cross functional teams to work on such problems. But, on careful evaluation of current business models, fuelled by new technology & complexities arising out of global nature of businesses, emerging new & fungible roles, generational gaps becoming more evident in corporate lives etc., we realise that to solve the problems in today’s businesses we need to go beyond the cross functional teams.

Thus, there are broadly two sets of problems that academia has to address:

How to ensure that the functional breed of young professionals meet the industry demand.
How to ensure that the functional breed of young professionals are also equipped with relevant problem solving skills, as they would be needed to work on it more often than before.

While globally academia, in collaboration with industry, is working in on first part of the problem, we at ShilpBodh focus on second problem.

Why Choose Business Problem Solving as an area of focus

Problems are part of any business big or small. They result from variety of reasons, which primarily can be classified in three broad buckets. First, they might be due to the fast paced dynamically changing business & market place. Second, the fact that the organization must respond to these changes, lead to problems in the business if these responses are not well researched and comprehensive. Finally, quite often the source of the problem is due to fact that at times we are unwilling to make changes in our business & operations in response to the changes that we see around.

Problem solving itself is a very generic description and would mean different things to different people. However, when viewed from business perspective it would have commonality across different domain and industries. Irrespective of nature & type of business, practically all companies have common challenges viz.,

How to grow top line
How to contain cost and ensure healthy bottom line
How to acquire new customers
How to retain existing customers
How to ensure long term sustainability of today’s business gains

There are two approaches to dealing with the above:

A paradigm shift into ways of doing business through product / process / technology / business model innovations and managing their interrelationships.
A sustained improvement in the existing ecosystem through use of various tools & techniques by solving problems that a business encounters and thus helping to answer questions mentioned above. Problem could be at a process level, product level, in a business unit or at an enterprise level.

Interestingly between the above approaches, one cannot be at the cost of other. Business needs to undergo cyclic paradigm shifts, followed by longer phase of sustenance / correction / improvement. This after a while, needs further transformation for next level of shift and the cycle thus continues.

In both the approaches, one would need a strong set of people with acumen to solve problems apart from functional / domain and other experts. The fallacy that industry has probably made is by not recognizing this as an independent competency.

So, what do we do about it and what should be the curriculum of the program

Problem solving thus leads to one common element across different functional roles. People spend good amount of time in analysing / solving some or the other problems related to their functional area. Not necessarily it is problem per se. It could also be an opportunity that needs to be exploited. For ex., Supply Chain team would want to bring down its logistic cost, Operations team would want to reduce wastages and optimize utilization & productivity of their resources. HR team would be looking at improving Hire to Deploy – both in terms of time & ratio.

Due to complexity of business today, most of the enterprise problems are rooted in the business process they follow which cuts across different functions in the organization. Hence problem solving has become cross functional initiative. In fact, experience suggests that most of the functional managers & above spend anywhere from 40% to 60% of their time in solving problems.

The answer lies in creating competency in structured problem-solving approach in a manner that all components of solutions are brought together in solving a problem. The challenge is to identify those components. The industry has seen sudden thrust on subjects like Data Analytics, Design Thinking etc. each independently perceived as panacea to all kinds of business problem solving. True, each of them are very strong concepts but alone will not help solve problem. Solving problem is different from understanding problem or making recommendations. It is end to end activity of fixing problems with only proof of its success being the same measurement method showing improvement which diagnosed the problem in the first place.

Broad components of the proposed program can be in divided into three parts as below:

Core of Problem Solving

Structured Problem-Solving Approaches
Systems Thinking…….Thinking in Totality
Design Thinking – Designing for future
Management Systems & Processes

Problem Solving – Tools & Techniques

Understanding Data & Variation
Data Analysis – Simple Techniques for Data Summarization
Data Analysis – Advanced Techniques for Inferential Analysis
Data Modelling – Predictive Analysis
Statistical models for Designing Experiments for Optimal Results
Mathematical Modelling & Optimization – Understanding Alternatives, Objectives and Constraints

Enabling Eco System

Decision Science – The art & science of Decision Making in Real World
Project & Program Management
Customer Experience – Design, Implementation and Enhancement
Negotiation Skills – Designing Optimal Propositions for Win-Win Scenario
Organizational Culture – How to navigate through Org Structure & Boundaries
Managing Risk in uncertain environment
Change Management

Who do we think are the right set of people to undergo this program?

This program is suitable for Graduate/Post-Graduate students.

The entire program will be divided into three proficiency levels as detailed below.

Broad Areas of BOK	Comprehension Level	Proficiency Level
Broad Areas of BOK	Comprehension Level	L1	L2	L3
Core of Problem Solving	Understand & Apply	A) Management Systems & processes B) Structured Problem-Solving Approaches	A) Systems Thinking – Thinking in Totality	A) Design Thinking – Designing for future
Problem Solving – Tools & Techniques	Understand & Apply	A) Understanding Data & Variation B) Data Analysis – Simple Techniques for Data Summarization C) Data Analysis – Advanced Techniques for	A) Mathematical Modelling & Optimization – Understanding Alternatives, Objectives and Constraints	A) Data Modelling – Predictive Analysis B) Statistical models for Designing Experiments for Optimal Results
		Inferential Analysis
Enabling Eco System	Understand	A) Project & Program Management	A) Customer Experience – Design, Implementation and Enhancement B) Decision Science – The art & science of Decision Making in Real World C) Managing Risk in uncertain environment	A) Negotiation Skills – Designing Optimal Propositions for Win-Win Scenario B) Organizational Culture – How to navigate through Org Structure & Boundaries C) Change Management

The definition of comprehension level proposed is as follows:

Understand	Read & understand facts / ideas by organizing, comparing, translating, interpreting, giving descriptions, and stating the main ideas; read & understand descriptions, communications, reports, tables, diagrams, directions, regulations, etc.
Apply (+Understand)	Know when and how to use acquired knowledge, ideas, procedures, methods, formulas, principles, theories, etc. in new problem-solving situations
Analyse (+Apply)	Break down information into its constituent parts, recognize their relationship to one another and how they are organized; identify motives or causes, making inferences and find evidence to support generalizations; identify sublevel factors or salient data from a complex scenario
Synthesize	Build a structure or pattern from diverse elements; ability to put parts together to form a whole.
Evaluate	Make judgments about the value of proposed ideas, information, solutions, quality of work etc., by comparing the proposal to specific criteria or standards.

What is most critical to the approach

The focus of this program is going to be competency building and not just skill certification.

The critical guiding factor would be driving from practical problem to building theory to solution. This would be accomplished in following six steps:

Statement of a very specific problem from an industry sector
Generalization of the specific problem into a class of problem across different industry / functional domain
Developing intuitive approaches to potential solutions to the class of problem
Building on theory based on the approach selected
Developing solution to the class of generalized problem
Deriving solution to the specific problem in question.

The content of the program will ensure that we have trained resources competent in solving not just their functional problems but more importantly business & enterprise problems. In contemporary terms, the trained resources will not just be the right set for Data Analytics but people to deploy it effectively in solving problems.