The Problem With Problem Solving

Join us this January for a lecture that questions one of the most taken-for-granted impulses of our time: the rush to solve.

About the Lecture

We live inside systems obsessed with speed. Understanding is treated as a luxury, while action is framed as a moral imperative. Problems are quickly named, realities flattened into insights, and complex human lives reduced to pain points waiting for solutions.

This lecture pauses before the fix.

Rather than asking what should be done, the session asks what gets lost when we intervene too quickly, and what becomes possible when we stay longer with ambiguity, observation, and interpretation. Drawing from traditions of ethnography, fieldwork, and close attention, the lecture contrasts solution-first thinking with practices that begin by listening, watching, and making sense of lived experience.

The session explores deeper ethical questions, including:

• Who gets to define what the “problem” is in the first place
• Whose realities become visible within systems of design, policy, and innovation
• How dominant frameworks render certain lives legible and others invisible
• When slowing down, delaying action, or refusing to intervene may be the most responsible choice

Through stories and examples from real-world contexts, this lecture reframes investigation itself as a radical act, not as a step toward better solutions, but as a way of relating more honestly to the world before attempting to change it.

About the Speaker

Ayush Chauhan is the Founder and Managing Partner of Quicksand, a design strategy and innovation consultancy working across emerging markets at the intersection of business, public policy, international development, and culture.

At Quicksand, he has worked with organisations including Unilever, the World Bank, Google, Meta, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and UNICEF to design products and services addressing issues of social equity, public health, education, financial inclusion, and climate change. He is also the co-founder of Unbox Cultural Futures, an interdisciplinary platform that brings together voices from design, arts, and culture for debate and reflection.

An entrepreneur, educator, and mentor, Ayush is a Yale World Fellow and an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He currently serves on the boards of several non-profits, including the William J. Clinton Foundation in India and The Hunger Project India, and is also Director at STBY, a design research practice in the UK and the Netherlands.

PS: Your ticket includes a 250/- coupon for F&B

About unLecture

unLecture brings experts out of classrooms and into cafés, bars and neighbourhood spaces across Delhi. Created by three friends from St. Stephen’s, Delhi who wanted learning to feel warm, social and alive. unLecture turns an otherwise ordinary evening into a conversation you may think about long after it ends.