Collaborative Problem Solving
Connecting with consumers and enabling farmers

India’s exploding population and emerging economy has placed new demands on an already taxed food supply. As one of India’s largest food manufacturers, Hindustan Lever faces a problem of increasing demand and dwindling supply.

fig 1 & 2. Workshop session

  • Date: Spring 06
  • Timeframe: 15 weeks
  • Credits: Clinton Barth, Daniel Greene, Mark King, Zachary Paradis

fig 3. Concept scoring

fig 4. Solution hierarchy

Process

Collaboration is a core competency of design. It is often beneficial to get expertise and opinions from different fields, particularly when facing a large problem. To help us tackle the problem of a dwindling food supply in India, we leveraged the skills of the entire class.

Participants were first given a short presentation high-lighting the most relevent findings from our research. They were then split into teams, each with a different worksheet specifying the part of the problem they were trying to solve. After a generation session, the groups each presented their most compelling solutions, which were discussed by the class.

The workshop generated close to one hundred concepts. The concepts were clustered to create larger concept systems, each one addressing a specific part of the problem in different ways. The point concepts of each system were then scored to eliminate the least effective ideas and ensure that they concepts worked together as a whole. The concept systems were then also checked for interaction against one another. The resulting concept hierarchy shows how the solutions support and interact with one another.

Outcome

The final outcome was a series of concept systems aimed at accomplishing two major initiatives: connecting with consumers and enabling farmers. Strategies for increasing farmer education and providing higher quality inputs address the supply side of the problem, while a premium brand of food products address the needs of India's growing middle class.

Download the full report: [PDF, 3 MB]