Hi, My name is Christine Rice and I am a rising Junior at the University at Albany. I am so grateful to have had the pleasure of hearing from Dhairya Pujara through the Blackstone LaunchPad/ Albany Entrepreneurs United event. As the Vice President of the club, he gave me such inspiration about creating a business that really answers the problems in the community from the perspective of those who are affected by it. Moving forward from it, I really learned the importance of getting various perspectives when one is looking for creative solutions.
Design Thinking really helped me incorporate many creative solutions to varying problems. As the speaker said, you need to make sure that the population that we are solving the problem for has a way for using the product. He even gave a great example of how he made water accessible for an area in Africa. However, the local culture has a tradition that people would walk to the water source and that’s where they would have conversations. Thus, there was no use for the water system he had put in because it was not created in a way that would benefit the community. In this case, the man thought of a solution but did not think of the correct one for the situation. This was one example of how design thinking can successfully help someone create impact and avoid mistakes in business management, I will carry this newly-gained knowledge with me forward in my career.