Reinventing Academia with Innovative Minds

[Music]

hello friends

well usually we speak about

education

innovation

in india

we get reminded

by one famous

bollywood movie

that movie has two characters

one is rancho

atres chatur

i hope you would have guessed what movie

i’m talking about

we laughed a lot

about chathu’s methods

and we also appreciated

ranchers approach

but unfortunately

we all

are more chatters

than rancho and this is unfortunately

because

we followed the education system

which we inherited for a british raj

some modifications were certainly made

but the fundamentals remained unchanged

and from a student perspective

if we have to define

this education system

then we can just use one phrase

shut up

and don’t ask questions

and in spite of this

if you go ahead

and ask an intelligent question

to your parents or to your teachers

then they will immediately step back

saying ah

talking big

things tell us

how much

you scored

in your exam

how many months you got

so just

shut up

and don’t ask

questions unfortunately killed

the creativity

the out-of-box thinking

in our people

we produce generations

based on rote learning

to swallow and vomit mechanism

our education system

revolved around marks and greats

it hardly encouraged us

to chase good ideas

but now we believe

that this needs to change

we want our youngsters

to think about our box

we want our youngsters to innovate

we want our youngsters to emerge as

problems all of us

and since last five six years

we are working on this approach

the primary reason

why we believe in this

is because now we believe

that india is not just the country

of 1.3 billion mouse which we have to

feed

but more importantly

we are a country

with 1.3 billion brains

and 2.6 billion hands

we also believe

that if we can connect the problems

which world is facing

to these brains and to these hands

then we will able to give solutions

which are world class

so i have decided

to focus

only on two initiatives

which might be of interest to you

i’m also sure that other initiatives are

equally interesting

but i just want to give you a flavor

of what unique things we are doing

which is creating the tent

which is creating the tectonic shift

which we are expecting in our education

system

now you must have heard word hackathon a

lot hackathons happen in nukes and

corner of the city or the country

but when we started working for it

in 2015 2016

hardly anyone was aware about the

concept of hackathon we personally went

to more than 30 35 government

organizations big organizations

isro drdo ministry of railways road

transport drinking water sanitation

and we told them that please share with

us your problems and we will use those

problems

to challenge students to offer

innovative solutions we also traveled

across the country

organizing workshops addressing students

telling them

about the concept of hackathon

and how

they can change

the sector how they can influence the

sector how they can innovate

what kind of products they can make

and the results were phenomenal we had

more than 500 problems

from 30 plus

ministries

and we saw participation of 40 000 plus

students

suddenly

india hackathon

became world’s biggest hackathon

it became the world’s biggest open

innovation model

and that gave us the confidence

that if you challenge youngsters

correctly

they can come up with miracles

they can come up with concepts

which are very very innovative out of

the box

now

this one in the hackathon has become a

big brand

last month in the hackathon we had 40

000 plus teams

participating each team had eight

participants

and they were offering solutions to best

of the institutions in this country

isro

implementing more than 20 plus

ideas

ministry of railways

road transport working implementing on

some of these ideas our national

security agencies are working on some of

these ideas

hologram based signaling system see

implemented in mohali

now the time is

going to be very different

especially for youngsters

students

who rely on proxies

because we will have system face

recognition system

which will

directly mark your present or absent

we are supporting 100 such projects

and we believe

that soon

these projects

will emerge into really successful

startups

when we are talking about hackathon

we are not just trying to solve real big

problems

but we are also using this concept

even design something like toys

i don’t know how many of you are aware

about toy scenario in this country

india is one of the biggest toy market

in the world our toy market is 1.5

billion dollars

and we can safely say

more than

85 of our toys

are imported

we are losing lot of foreign exchange

but more importantly

you are you may not have thought about

the impact

which these toys create on our young

kids

they are impressionable minds

these toys

based on

western values

different concepts

are not native to us

they are different

and we hardly have toys

based on our 5 000 plus year of culture

our ethos our civilization

we went ahead

and organized recently this pakistan

where we challenged our students

our school students our college students

to come up with innovative toys

based on indian ethos

indian culture

and the concepts again

we are very very phenomenal

see

the toys which our students have

developed

based on our own constitution

chess

which india takes pride in inventing

now the students went ahead

and created a puzzle board

so

bored of that chess is also different

and on that you have to play chess

very innovative

we have more than

100 such concepts with us

and this month

we are going to organize

this roundtable of students

with toy manufacturers

six standard students seven standard

students are going to present these toy

concepts to manufacturers

so that these concepts can be

commercialized

so what i want to show here

to these two examples

that

if we push our youngsters

to think differently

they can surprise

us not only this now government has

started using hackathon as a diplomatic

tool to engage with youngsters

from foreign countries

we organize two aerations of india

singapore

isn’t this fantastic

isn’t it something which we all should

be proud of

so as i said

our youngsters are the future

this decade

belongs to india

and i talk to them a lot

but many times

our youngsters tell us

that sir

we want to pursue our ideas

we want to do our startups

we want to pursue our entrepreneurship

but our parents are not

allowing my boyfriend is not in favor or

my girlfriend is

against it

they are telling us

why you want to get into this rigmarole

of 48 hours pure day work

destroying our personal life

and work on ideas

so we said

oh

this is the problem

and we need to do something about it

so we came up with a very very

innovative program

we are calling it as a normal mba the

name is mba

that program is mba in innovation

entrepreneurship and venture development

as i said we are calling it as an mba

because everyone knows what mba program

is but the structure

is completely different

it’s a

incubator-based program

the classroom component is only 30

so what we are telling our youngsters

who have such great ideas

is

come

get admission into these programs as

teams

and work on your idea

means what

you can’t tell your spouse or partner or

your girlfriend or boyfriend

that you are doing mba your parents can

tell your relatives that my son or my

daughter is doing mba but underground of

that mba

you are actually pursuing

entrepreneurship

you are working on your startup you are

working on your idea

and you are given systematic training

so if you are successful

after two years

you emerge

as an entrepreneur

if you have failed

you still have learned all the tricks in

the trade

and you emerge as entrepreneur

and majority of the companies now want

people with

entrepreneurial mindset

employability of these people is

these people are really very high

you know

so currently we are

piloting this program

in 20 plus institutions

and the results

what we are getting the feedback what we

are getting from these institutions

is that this program is phenomenal and

now we believe

that even the conventional mba program

will get redesigned

on this format

as i said

we are doing multiple initiatives

we are

training 50 000

plus teachers and faculty members as

innovation ambassadors

and when we are talking about innovation

ambassadors we are talking to them we

are training them on

design thinking critical thinking

how to manage

ipr

how to handle an idea

at incubation level pre-incubation level

how to do startup

because these are going to be our on

ground change agents

we have established

more than 2

500

institutional innovation councils

to handle institutions

on innovation and entrepreneurship

we are doing multiple national

challenges

to crowd source ideas

and then fund them

so what we believe

is that in last five six years we have

come up with a very very comprehensive

program

for

creating the ecosystem

which will help nurture

ideas which will help nurture

entrepreneurs

because we believe

that if we give right opportunity

right support and right guidance

to our youngsters

then they will not only make this

country ahmadiwar but they will generate

ideas which will have global impact

and then only

we can say

in real sense that we are going to

emerge

at jagadguru

which we all are dreaming of

i am here to seek your support

let’s work together

let’s innovate and let’s fulfill this

dream

thank you thank you very much