#005 The Poetics of Innovation with Uday Dandavate

Making Business Art

Did you start your career with the aspiration of one day doing work that is deeply meaningful to you? Many of us do, but as the years pass we might struggle with truly fulfilling that desire. Yet, as my guest Uday Dandavate shares with us, we can start transforming what work means for us by shifting our perspective and what we look for. In Uday’s case, he shifted his approach to work from making objects to deeply understanding people’s experience of life, and then shifting from “selling” to co-creating value with others.

In this episode Uday and I talk about his life as a designer and travels to learn how culture influences people’s choices, his first experiences with participatory design, co-founding his company SonicRim in San Francisco in the late 1990s, how he shifted his mindset from selling products to co-creating value with others, why he invites clients to express the purpose of their designs in a poem, and his experience teaching at Carnegie Mellon University’s Integrated Innovation Institute.

Uday invites us all to look at things differently and explore the world through the eyes of others.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

A design activist and ethnographer of social imagination, Uday Dandavate is also CEO of SonicRim, a San Francisco based design research company specializing in co-creation. He has traveled extensively around the world, studying and connecting with all kinds of people and cultures, and watching and participating as they change over time. In his professional capacity, as well as through blogging, poetry, teaching, speaking, and facilitating, Uday provokes fresh perspectives that help to humanize technologies and democratize design.

ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART

Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.

This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.

Instagram: @MakingBusinessArt