Design and innovation capacity building in India

The DESINNO project aims at establishing innovation capacities in India with the help of improved Design education considering the modern social, economic and business environment.

Primarily, this project is set up to contribute to the modernization efforts of the industrial design and creative sectors of India through enhanced quality of educational services and future human resources, that are built on transfer of educational curriculum content and good practices from EU Programme Countries.

More specifically, DESINNO project will contribute to the internationalization of the Indian Design Education through the establishment of three Design & Innovation Centres in universities of India. These centres will provide a common ground for:

• the development of innovative and permanent methods for Research and Design approaches
• the establishment of cross-sectoral projects for collaboration and co-learning
• the establishment of Inter-industry projects to facilitate the inclusion of design thinking approaches
• the development of extreme
• affordability principles for the benefit of the developing nations while taking care of the accessibility and sustainability aspects of design.
• the development of community-based programs enabling designers, craftsmen and artisans
• the modernization and internationalization of Indian HEIs by improving the university design courses that will encompass product and service design by following state of the art methodologies in design thinking, sustainability, design research, social innovation, ethical issues in design, etc.

Meet the Principal Investigator(s) for the project

Dr Busayawan Lam - Dr Busayawan Lam is the Senior Tutor and Deputy Head of Brunel Design School (Education). She specialises in the areas of New Product Development (NPD) process, Innovation Strategy and Management, and Design Strategy. She was trained in Industrial Design at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and practiced as a product designer in a small-and-medium-sized exporter company in Thailand. She later obtained MSc Industrial Design at University of Salford and PhD Design Research at Brunel University London. She worked as a researcher at the National Metal and Materials Technology Centre (MTEC) Thailand. She has many years of experience studying user requirements, ascertaining design trends and recommending strategic design directions for a variety of organisations ranging from a domestic general hospital equipment producer to a global electronics company. Her current research interests include co-design, community-led design and social innovation. 

Project last modified 13/10/2023