Indian Institute of Thinking Skills – IITS

Divya, Vidya and Shilpa were good friends from their MBA times at IIM Indore (IIMI)
where they  graduated from in 2014. Each of them went into different industries but
had a practice of  getting together the third week of every December to spend three
days not only re-living the  past, but also sharing their work experiences and the joys
and sorrows in their personal lives.  However, being Business school students,
discussions about business used to dominate their  conversations, even more so,
since right from their B School days, they had tossed several  business ideas back
and forth. All three of them had a strong entrepreneurial drive, and wanted  to start a
business together should a good idea strike them.  
  
Over their six years of working in different businesses, they came to realize that
many of their  colleagues, and also many other people they were familiar with were
not equipped with some  of the frameworks and thinking skills that the B School
had taught them . Being avid readers  and knowledge seekers, Divya, Vidya and
Shilpa had also picked up deep knowledge and  experience in a whole bunch of
workplace skills. These were Creative thinking, Innovation,  Design thinking and
Critical thinking.  
  
In their respective organizations, all three of them were very highly regarded for
their thinking  skills and application of these concepts to various problems. While
Divya had in-depth  knowledge of creative thinking and innovation, Vidya had learnt
and applied design thinking on  several projects in her company. Shilpa had always
had a little bit of interest in Philosophy and  had also learnt about logic. In the
Critical thinking classes in the Institute, she had picked up  some knowledge, and
had expanded on this to great depth by reading and researching critical  thinking -
not only the enablers such as logical reasoning, but also what could be obstacles to 
critical thinking - such as cognitive biases and rhetoric. She was now an expert on
Critical  thinking, and was recognized as such in her organization.  
  
When the lockdowns were imposed in early 2020, the three of them found
themselves talking  to each other much more frequently, and one of those
conversations revolved around the poor  critical thinking skills of even senior
employees. They discussed as to how many decisions were  taken without actually
collecting or analyzing all the data, how, many of them were victims of  cognitive
biases such as the confirmation bias . On the other hand Vidya spoke about how 
design thinking had helped them complete several projects in record time and with
high  customer satisfaction levels. Working in an advertising agency Divya was very
comfortable with  creative thinking, and had also participated in various innovation
workshops revolving around  product development. After many conversations and
discussions the three realized that there  was a huge business opportunity in this
area, They realized that core generic thinking skills  were not taught in education,
and even in workplaces. Only a few organizations placed any  emphasis on these
skills. So they thought -we have had NIIT, IIHT and now maybe its time for a   IITS -
Indian Institute of Thinking Skills.  
 
After a lot of academic and market research they came to the conclusion that there
indeed was  a need for these thinking skills, but the explicit demand itself was not
high due to a lack of  awareness among corporates about these skills, and how they
could be applicable or relevant  to all their employees. The trio realized that while
there was a need, and no supply, anyone  who wanted to get into the business of
training on these skills will need to create awareness  and educate the customers
about how these thinking skills helped employees become better at  problem solving
, decision making, design and execution amongst other things. 

They decided to make the leap into the business. For the business name, they liked
'Indian  Institute of Thinking Skills' and use the abbreviation IITS everywhere - just
like the NIIT's and  IIHT's. They did a quick check and found out that all top level
domain name extensions such as  .net, .in. , .com for the name IITS , and they
were wondering which domain name extension to  actually use for their primary
website.  

The three of them decided to spell out the services they would offer to start with,
and also  decided that they would need to address development of the website
and a digital marketing  plan. Below are some of the details they listed about their
business, and more specifics about  what they needed to do about the website
and digital marketing.  
  
Services : IITS would offer the following services:  
  
 Creative thinking - offered as a 2 day workshop  
 Design thinking - Offered as a 3 day workshop  
 Innovation workshops - offered as 2 day modules  
 Critical thinking workshops - Offered as 1 day and 2 day modules  
  
Each of these had scope for a high degree of customization. All three of them were
competent  to handle all the three offerings, but for the purpose of specialization
they decided that Vidya  would focus on Design thinking, Vidya on Creative
thinking and Design thinking and Shilpa on  Critical thinking.  
  
In terms of pricing they debated two different models of pricing : per participant
pricing and per  day pricing, and after much debate they decided that they would
charge a flat rate of Rs.  40,000/- per trainer day, and cost course material, and case
studies at per participant. Travel,  stay and venue costs would be extra and borne by
the client company.  
  
They decided that they would sell these training services exclusively to corporate
clients in India  to start with. In particular, they decided to target corporate customers
in Mumbai (where all  three of them lived), NCR, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai.
They did not want to incur any  advertising spends targeted at other regions. While
they would spend money on certain  geographies, IITS was geared and ready to
provide training services in any other part of the  country either online, or on-site.  
 
Decision makers: In client organizations, Creative thinking training was driven by
Learning &  Development teams, whereas Design thinking and Innovation was
driven by Heads of  production, services or research. Critical thinking training was
typically driven by Senior  management and occasionally by Heads of functional
areas such as Technology or Sales .    
After close to two years of discussions, the team decided that they would launch the
business in  June 2022. In preparation for the launch, they decided to prepare a
marketing plan that would  include:  
  
Website plan: They decided to develop a website plan that would lay out following,
and serve  as a brief to the website design agency:  
  
 List of pages the website should have a two or three line description of what each
page  would be about  
 Landing pages with desired Calls to Action on each page, and also a list of any
marketing  assets that would be linked to the calls to action of the landing
pages  
 Website navigation (wireframe) - draw the diagram using tools such as draw.io
(Free  tool) or Visio or any other drawing tool  
 Navigation and SEF links (SEF URL example : greatfoods.com/specials/low-
gluten-food for-diabetics)  
 Keywords and phrases for each of the pages, as well as 'title' and
'description' tags   Any other onsite SEO initiatives that you would
recommend  
  
Note: Detailed content for each page would be developed once the basic website
plan was in  place.  
  
Digital marketing plan: IITS also decided that they needed to come up with a digital
marketing  plan to build a brand and generate leads. This plan would be handed
over to a Digital marketing  agency to design, develop and execute. Here’s the
minimum that IITS wanted to incorporate  into their Digital marketing plan  
  
 Social media marketing channels - detailed action plan  
 Social media posts plan - details that the agency is expected to
implement   Advertising campaign – listing of digital advertising channels,
message content and  anything else the agency needs to know to design
and execute campaigns   Lead nurturing and brand building campaigns if
any  
  
Note: Actual ads and posts copy would be written out at a later point of time. Right
now the  agency would outline the general content/themes, calls to action and
various marketing assets.    

Continued… 
Your Assignment 
  
Consider yourself to be the Marketing Head of team IITS and draw out the
detailed Website  plan and Digital marketing plans.  
  
Important 
  
 You can use MS Word or Powerpoint  
 Ensure you do a keyword analysis wherever relevant, and include the data as an
exhibit  (only top keywords need to come into the exhibit).  
 This is an agency brief - so please be organized  
 Please do not write essays. Bulleted points of one, two or three lines are
best.   Total length not to exceed 10 slides for each question. Please
articulate only the most  important points for each question.  

 Detailed website plan: 20 marks  

 Detailed digital marketing plan: 20 marks  
 Total marks for the assignment: 40  
 Last date for submission of assignment: 31 Jan 2022 – 5 PM.  
st

Assignment submission: Please email to your respective class representatives.  

This is a fictional case study developed by A.S.Prasad. Please do not upload to

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