These activities take place as part of the Design Management and Design Thinking sessions.

At the age of 15-17 our students are already learning to create new products and implement new solutions. The task set by the Design Management and Design Thinking (DMDT) sophomores was to solve the problem of stray animals in Bishkek. The problem has been around for many years, and the multiple regular solutions that have been proposed have failed. How to think out of the box and come up with an impactful idea?

The task was proposed in the Design Anthropology course, it’s refinement continued in the Design Management course, while implementation and sustainability were considered in the Project Management, Microeconomics, Business Modeling and other courses.

Each of the three working groups tackled one aspect of the problem:

• raising awareness of people about the problem;

• teaching the right behavioral patterns to the people who face the problem;

• making a shelter that could host different animals found in the streets.

The students have already completed “market” research, conducted in-depth interviews and surveys with stakeholders - from ordinary people to veterinarians, and brainstormed the problem at today's session. The details were shared by Elena Li-Baranovsky @ybaranouski, head of the DMDT program, TSI development director, who teaches the Design Management course:

– Usually, if you have an idea that you think is alluring, you stick to it and get yourself into the box, missing the opportunity to find another, better option. At the same time the idea often turns out to be quite regular. So that the students don’t get stuck with one solution and go beyond the usual creativity, we use the game “Playing The Future” in the classroom, which product teams, marketing professionals and other specialists in leading Russian, US and European companies use to create products and services. The game helps generate plenty of ideas in a short time, taking into account the main global and local economic, cultural, technological and consumer trends. Subsequently, the ideas are grouped into a Venn diagram by three sectors: “usefulness for the individual”, “value for business”, and “technological solutions”, thus making it possible to select the best and, most importantly, most feasible solutions.