EP06 | pt1 | Is Design Thinking a Learnable Skill? | Roundtable: Dissecting Education ft. Yaser Awan

Is it the university's job to teach you how to think, or just what to think? In this episode, Dr. Hammad Naveed (Pro-Rector, UCP) and I sit down with special guest Yaser Awan (Director of Innovation, Takhleeq Labs) to unpack design thinking, the principle behind how companies like IBM and Apple actually grow, and why most degree programs still haven't caught up to it. Yasir brings his firsthand experience from the education sector, breaking down what actually prepares students for the real world, and what doesn't. We dig into: → Whether problem solving and design thinking are learnable skills, or something else entirely → Why 70% of recent graduates say they learned more in 6 months at a job than in 4 years of their degree → The conditioning built into our education system, and why breaking it is the real work → Why a 2-month-old employee sometimes outperforms a 4-year degree holder → What happens when 450,000 graduates enter the market thinking the same way → Rewarding "perfect" instead of rewarding growth, and what that costs us → Getting out of the comfort zone, and why that matters more than any curriculum This isn't a theory lecture. It's a real conversation about what actually builds a problem solver. Part of the RoundTable series, where we dissect the biggest problems in education with the people building solutions to them. 00:00 Introduction 03:17 Ecosystem Building 04:30 Outcome of System 05:10 Design Thinking 07:36 Process 09:02 Habit Development 10:10 Entrepreneurship 12:00 What is Entrepreneurship? 14:00 TCP/IP Protocol 15:00 Disruption 17:15 Lack of Empathy 18:25 BlackBerry Case Study 20:15 University KPIs 22:00 What Parents Want 23:39 T-Shaped Personality 24:30 To Be Continued Subscribe for the rest of the RoundTable: Dissecting Education series.