For India to be a sustainable economic powerhouse and become a truly Viksit Bharat by 2047, we need to come together and build a socio-economic ecosystem that has design and creation at the core of the growth engine. By we, I mean the education system, policy makers, society, students, researchers and industry. And when this applies to automobile or mobility design, it implies the Indian automobile industry.
Automobile design education has to literally move out of the static classrooms and come alive in the world of application, adaption and adoption. For years, it has remained primarily in classrooms with a greater emphasis on theoretical aspects. And for no fault of its own. It is because the industry has not seen the design education space as one of its very own. Then again, one cannot fault the industry too as it has been going through its own evolution of competence, capability and self-reliance over decades. Since the modern automobile revolution began in our country with the birth of the Maruti 800 in 1983, we have made solid progress into a position today when the Indian automobile industry can rightfully claim to be world-class when it comes to manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, engineering, service and even retail. Design is the last frontier.
The next phase of evolution requires collaborative ecosystems where academia, industry, designers and technology partners work together to accelerate prototyping, testing and validation beyond traditional R&D models.
{{/usCountry}}The next phase of evolution requires collaborative ecosystems where academia, industry, designers and technology partners work together to accelerate prototyping, testing and validation beyond traditional R&D models.
{{/usCountry}}We are not talking about any new concept here. History tells us that some of the biggest advancements in any aspect of human life have been brought about when the people in power along with the specific domain of business or commerce have supported such endeavours.
The creation of Centres of Excellence (CoEs) within design institutions will function as proof-of-concept hubs, enabling companies to develop, test and refine new products, technologies and user experiences before commercial deployment. This creates a symbiotic relationship between the design school and the technology solution provider, the former wanting to provide real-world education and task-ready skills while the latter wants constant validation of and feedback on the systems being used.
Imagine if various design schools collaborate with tech partners in creating such CoEs all over the country, across aspects of design from sketching to clay modelling to additive manufacturing to CMF and prototyping, India could, in the next two decades, create a pipeline of industry-ready world-class design talent.
It is like replicating the IPL model in automobile design. Get the best in the business from across the world to work with a set of Schools of Excellence or SoEs in identifying, nurturing and developing talent, through live projects eventually creating an unending pipeline of talent.
As the NEP 2020 puts huge focus on vocation and employability at the higher education level, the design school needs to enable and empower students to be productive from day 01 by enhancing the curriculum into one co-created with the industry. There needs to be a level of flexibility in what is being imparted to prepare the students for what the industry aspires for in a new designer. This is why embedding live industry projects into the curriculum gives students hands-on experience in relevant and emerging areas such as electric mobility, software-defined vehicles, connected technologies, sustainable materials and user experience design, while helping automakers reduce their time and resources invested currently in making fresh entrants come to speed with what the industry needs and works on. This eventually reduces innovation risk and shortens product development cycles.
Both sides of the design education spectrum have to move out of their respective stages of inertia and move into a standard operating model of collaboration, co-creation and cooperation. Each of these three things may seem similar but are very distinct. Collaboration is about agreeing on the greater purpose of the design talent pipeline hence pooling resources to create the SoEs and CoEs. Co-creation is about the curriculum, the faculty line-up and the desired outcomes, every year, as per the need of the industry. Cooperation is about providing projects to the SoEs through the year, both as ‘betas’ or as part of a larger project within an automaker, across automakers.
Automakers, component makers, technology companies, solution providers, practising designers, academia, researchers, policy makers, financiers, existing design fraternity and parents have to work together to make this happen. Only then can we boast of a sustainable design talent pool, an innovation pipeline and the unlocking of the economic value of designing in India and designing for the world.
The next wave of automotive innovations will be certainly driven through the design schools by developing national capability in mobility design, ever increasing investment in design as a strategic capability, differentiator and critical leverage in our Atmanirbhar mission.
If Italians are about flair, Germans about balance, French about quirkiness and Japanese about harmony, it is certainly time that we work towards defining what an automobile designed in India is about. The unique Indian design DNA.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Avik Chattopadhyay, founder, Indian School for Design of Automobiles (INDEA), XLRI Delhi-NCR.