WHAT IS DAKSHA RESEARCH STUDIO ?
Daksha Research Studio is a collaborative, half-day applied research event where industry professionals bring real organizational challenges and explore them with IIM Tiruchirappalli faculty, researchers, and fellow industry professionals.
"It is not a conventional conference or a consulting pitch."
The focus is on understanding a difficult problem more deeply, questioning assumptions, reframing the challenge, and developing informed possibilities for action.
No Research Background
No research background is required to participate in the studio.
Bridging Worlds
Daksha Research Studio is designed to bring practice and research into conversation.
HAVE A CHALLENGE WORTH EXPLORING?
Some organizational problems resist easy answers.
They persist despite new strategies, operational fixes, and repeated attempts to solve them.
Daksha Research Studio brings such challenges to the table.
Bring a complex organizational challenge, strategic dilemma, unresolved question, or persistent problem from your organization.
You don't need to have the answer.
TWO WAYS TO PARTICIPATE
BRING A CHALLENGE
If you have a complex organizational challenge you'd like to explore, submit it for consideration as a Challenge Leader. Selected Challenge Leaders will present their challenges and explore them with a dedicated group of industry experts, faculty, and researchers.
JOIN THE STUDIO
You don't need to submit a challenge to participate. Join as an Industry Expert and contribute your experience, perspectives, questions, and insights to challenges brought by other organizations. Spaces are limited to keep each Studio focused.
Participation is open to professionals who wish to engage in the Studio without submitting a challenge.
HOW THE STUDIO WORKS
BRING
Start with a real problem.
A Challenge Leader brings a complex, consequential organizational challenge to the Studio.
UNPACK
Examine what lies beneath it.
Question assumptions, explore tensions and constraints, and understand the organizational context surrounding the challenge.
REFRAME
See the problem differently.
Bring together research, industry experience, and diverse perspectives to uncover alternative ways of understanding the challenge.
DEVELOP
Explore possibilities for action.
Identify critical evidence gaps, develop new perspectives, and explore informed directions for what might come next.
THE STUDIO APPROACH
REAL PROBLEM
Start with complex, consequential challenges drawn from organizational practice.
DEEPER INQUIRY
Go beyond immediate solutions. Question assumptions, examine evidence, and explore alternative ways of understanding the problem.
PRACTICAL POSSIBILITIES
Develop new perspectives, possible explanations, and directions for action.
COLLABORATIVE THINKING
Bring together industry experience, faculty expertise, and research perspectives.
WHO'S IN THE STUDIO?
CHALLENGE LEADER
Brings a complex organizational challenge and opens it up for collective inquiry.
INDUSTRY EXPERT
Brings practical experience, alternative perspectives, and insights from organizational practice.
FACULTY ANCHOR
Guides the inquiry, questions assumptions, and brings relevant academic and research perspectives to the conversation.
RESEARCHER
Facilitates the discussion, captures emerging insights, and supports the synthesis of ideas.
WHAT HAPPENS INSIDE THE STUDIO?
Selected challenges are explored simultaneously in dedicated, focused Studios, each bringing together a curated group of industry professionals, faculty, and researchers.
Each Studio works on a different organizational challenge.
The conversation moves from:
The goal is not to produce a ready-made answer in a few hours.
The goal is to understand the challenge differently and identify informed possibilities for what comes next.
WHAT MIGHT YOU TAKE AWAY?
A NEW WAY OF FRAMING THE PROBLEM
See the challenge beyond its immediate symptoms and conventional interpretations.
NEW PERSPECTIVES
Engage with industry experts, faculty, researchers, and diverse organizational experiences.
CRITICAL EVIDENCE GAPS
Identify what you know, what you assume, and what you still need to understand.
DIRECTIONS FOR ACTION
Explore research-informed possibilities and questions that can be taken back into organizational practice.
WHAT HAPPENS ON THE DAY?
INAUGURATION
Welcome to Daksha Research Studio and an introduction to the Studio approach.
KEYNOTE
An opening perspective to set the intellectual context for the afternoon's inquiry.
ROUND 1
Challenge Leaders present their organizational challenges. Studio participants clarify the problem, examine its context, and begin unpacking assumptions and tensions.
BREAK
Tea & Networking
ROUND 2
Studios go deeper into the challenge, exploring alternative perspectives, evidence gaps, and possible directions for action.
PLENARY SYNTHESIS
Insights from the different Studios come together to identify patterns, perspectives, and emerging themes.
CLOSING REFLECTIONS
Reflecting on the questions, insights, and possibilities that emerged through the Studio.
DINNER RECEPTION
Dinner & Networking
SUBMIT A CHALLENGE
What makes a good Daksha Research Studio challenge?
Bring a problem that is:
COMPLEX
It cannot be reduced to a simple operational fix.
CONSEQUENTIAL
It matters to your organization, people, customers, or stakeholders.
PERSISTENT
It has resisted straightforward solutions or continues to generate difficult questions.
OPEN TO INQUIRY
You are willing to examine the problem from different perspectives.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU SUBMIT?
Submitted challenges will be reviewed and selected for inclusion in the Studio. Selected Challenge Leaders will present their challenges during Round 1 and then work with a curated group of Industry Experts, Faculty Anchors, and Researchers.
* Submitting a challenge does not automatically guarantee selection.
YOUR CHALLENGE BRIEF
(~250-700 WORDS)No formal research proposal is required. Tell us briefly:
THE CHALLENGE
What is happening?
WHY IT MATTERS
Why is this problem consequential?
WHAT MAKES IT DIFFICULT?
What makes the challenge difficult to resolve?
WHAT HAS BEEN TRIED?
What approaches or solutions have already been considered?
THE QUESTION
What would you like to understand or explore?
"You don't need to have the answer."
Submit Your ChallengeWHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE?
Daksha Research Studio is for professionals who:
- Are dealing with a complex organizational challenge
- Have encountered a problem that resists straightforward solutions
- Are questioning assumptions behind an existing approach
- Want perspectives beyond their immediate organizational context
- Are interested in engaging with research-informed inquiry
- Want to contribute their experience to challenges faced by other organizations
No research background is required.
PARTICIPATION & CONFIDENTIALITY
Participants should share challenges at an appropriate level of detail and avoid confidential, proprietary, personal, or commercially sensitive information.
Discussions are intended to support collective inquiry, learning, and the exploration of different perspectives.