Niti Bhan brings a multidisciplinary perspective to design and innovation – one that is multicultural and holistic, integrating her life experience on multiple continents and countries with her passion for design. Her research interests push the boundaries of industrial design and creative practice, often combining tools and methods from strategy and business to address challenges faced by complex societal systems.
Watch her 7 minute TEDTalk on the African informal economy sectors of trade & light manufacturing for insights drawn from more than a decade of visual ethnography in rural and urban locations, or her 10 minute opening talk for the panel on digitalization of the African informal economy at re:publica, Berlin 2019.
In 2022, her contributions to industry and society were put into practice as member of the jury for Core77 Design Awards – Consumer Technology, and as curriculum contributor to the German development agency’s (GiZ) online course on inclusive business for social impact. In May 2022, she received a grant from the Arts Promotion Center of Finland (taike.fi) to establish the innovative creative practices incubator Ymmärrys ry as a non-profit contributing to societal development.
She continues the work of Emerging Futures Lab – a pioneering multidisciplinary design and innovation consulting practice for frontier markets founded in Singapore in November 2007 – and over the years has completed intensive projects relying on insights and strategy from immersion in the research context for clients ranging from the Dutch government to global mobile phone brands, as well as cutting edge startups in fintech, blockchain, mesh wifi and renewable energy – most recently for Husk Power Systems in Tanzania.
Well-known for speaking persuasively on the outcomes of impactful design practice, her keynotes include the Closing Plenary of the 25th Anniversary Human-Computer Interaction (CHI) conference in 2007 in San Jose, California, titled ‘The Mobile as a Post-Industrial Platform for Socio-Economic Development and innovation at the bottom of the pyramid and emerging markets’ and on the systemic challenges of technology and inequality in Madrid, Spain (2016) hosted by BankInter Foundation.
A recognized author on design, she has published articles in BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Chartered Designers UK, and Core77 – Online Design Magazine many of which have been cited in highly ranked academic publications.
Her MBA in New Markets Strategy is from the University of Pittsburgh, followed by a Heinz Foundation Fellowship to apprentice at the University’s Technology Transfer Office. She earned a first class in Industrial & Production Engineering from the University of Bangalore, and post graduate design education at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. At the Institute of Design, IIT, Chicago, she maintained a 4.0 gpa while working fulltime as Director, Graduate Recruiting. She has 7 O Levels from London University, and a high school diploma from the International School of Kuala Lumpur (ISKL), Malaysia.
Her 30 years of global experience includes employers such as Hewlett Packard and McCann Erickson in the post liberalization Indian market of the mid 1990s; and The Second City, the world’s leading “university of improv” during the dotcom boom of the late nineties in the United States. She has lived and worked in the United States, Singapore, India, Finland, The Netherlands, and Kenya.
