Conceptualizing an online platform to facilitate purposeful serendipity, meaningful networking and hiring, through play and creative collaborations.

Can being at the right place at the right time with the right people over the most compelling causes lead to fountains of creativity, innovation and self-discovery? This study explores how to build a space that advocates creative confidence, opens paths to discovering ikigai, and facilitates interactions among resonating people, all in a space powered by collaboration and playfulness. In addition, this research attempts to understand the underlying motivation, behavior and emotions of individuals when they encounter serendipitous interactions in professional settings as employees of organizations and as entrepreneurs/freelancers’. ‘How can we spark purposeful serendipity to catalyze creative collaborations & innovation?’ ‘How to find and network with professionally resonating individuals in a chaotic world?’ I went through 4 research strategies to answer the above questions: 1) Studying the existing professional networking platforms in both online and physical worlds for their functional prowess and gaps through primary and secondary research. 2) Interviewing over 60 individuals, conducting qualitative analysis of the output and defining the key behaviors and needs. 3) Rapid prototyping and testing concepts with the prospective users consisting of innovators, employees and founders of startups. 4) Building and testing a playful interaction model to test the here forth learned. Prototypes, user testing outcomes, feedback and learnings are shared for the 6 concepts created in this study. The thesis aims to bring forward that there is indeed a strong demand for platforms/programs that boost creativity, collaboration and meaningful networking, and that the right modes of interactions facilitate these factors in circles of entrepreneurs, students and employees of organizations.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

System Design and Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Adhikarla, Saket Kashyap

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kressy, Matthew S.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139584

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/139584