Future Ready Through Creativity
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widely regarded
as the world’s top most chess player
ever
so you can imagine the shock 23 years
back
when he actually lost to a computer
he not only rattled the entire computer
fraternity
but also the chess productivity because
nobody could ever imagine
man losing to the machine so gary
famously said
i am the first knowledge worker whose
job is being threatened
by a mushy he then added just a week
back
saying that 96 of current jobs
will be vanishing so if all the jobs are
going to be vanishing like
you know an ice cream on a hot summer
day
then what does the future hold for us
there is hope
and for that i will segue a bit into
my journey through media and education
for some useful pointers
for the future
so it started off of course as i said
with media a whole lot of interviews
this is the president of india
these are shows which appeared in both
the europe
and northern american continent
the economic times went pink about 25
years back i was part of the launch team
for investors guide and my job was to
predict future share prices
spoken a lot on entrepreneurship we’ll
get to that sometime later
that’s an interesting insight to share
actually directed even film stars for a
glamour rat film
so that’s partially there
and the thing is this picture
brings me to a story of a small
girl who really loved to multi-color
everything inside on her first
day at school she was told by her new
teacher
no more culprits like that if it is the
sky
it has to be only blue if it is this
let’s say the forest it has to be only
green
so she came away a little unenthused
and we found her subdued over the next
few days and finally my
wife said that look why don’t we do
something
which creates happiness for children
like her
why don’t we create some theater of rain
or something
which can be wonderful activities that
bring happiness to their life
so it was this quest for happiness about
20 years back
that led to the birth of achievers
so what you see as if i’m wearing a hat
is actually my daughter pretending to be
a nut
at that time besides tv happening
i was also grooming a lot of ceos
for actually facing tv cameras how to
handle dress interviews
tricky questions strictly reporters
mainly
what i’m trying to say is i was handling
work with the biggies the big sharks
so what about the small ones you know
the daughters and
many other children like her so that’s
when
the idea came that let’s combine musical
theater
which has you know right from dancing
singing
and enactment role plays along with
poetry recitation
and then we bring it in a simple form
that children can assimilate
and then finally perform it as a it’s a
musical theater
broadway style show uh we ended up doing
hundreds of stage shows
and uh they eventually uh this is one of
our
favorite shows and we actually did an
original script for arun
sinha the first girl first lady
to climb mount everest on one foot
this is a shark topping musical in the
sense that over the last 20 years we’ve
done it dozens of times
starting with the polo hospitals in
chennai for their founders day
and uh this specific poetry
track has really inspired from president
kennedy
to jawaharlal and the latest
show this is what we are all waiting for
we
have uh very recently concluded a show
where the chief guest was from nasa
and uh the theme was
to do with stem education
infused with a lot of performing arts we
were not sure if
the head of the project from nasa is
going to take you it very kindly
because we expected somebody very high
draw rather serious focused only on the
science part
but we got the shock of her life once
she came for our show
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so let us take out a few quick pointers
from this journey in media and then
of course the performing arts as to how
we can get ahead in the future
perhaps the most important pointer would
be that happiness is at the core of it
all
a child or a student or even a
professional
in any office setting will be the most
productive
if they are fundamentally happy if a
person is not happy
then you know psychosomatically it can
lead to all kinds of
issues health issues possibly
absenteeism
a child also not wanting to go to school
so
the at the goal happiness has to be your
uncompromising target you know you need
to be really focused on achieving
an engagement level with the team that
everyone feels
willing and happy to be part of it the
most effective elements are of course
storytelling role play any kind of group
activities
can really uh bring out the best in
children
and uh students like for example when we
do workshops or corporate executives
we find that team-building activities
are
great for bon homie getting them to go
here
into a much tighter unit
and come out on top of the targets
right so then of course we are having
lots of uh
curiosity uh based activities
which are basically uh to trigger
creativity because we find that in the
future
if automation is going to be the rage
everywhere the only tasks which will not
be
automated will be the ones which are
creative so if you want an insurance
policy for the future
then it is very important to ensure
that we focus on developing our skills
connected with
creativity so what i’m getting at is
for the future a multi-disciplinary
approach
will be very critical to gain
ahead uh to ensure that you get the
brightest opportunities
that the world has to offer when
speaking of multi-disciplinary i am
reminded of
one visit to a
village in jakarta a very remote tribal
village where i was making a film
on education it was about being one
teacher school
the entire village had one school and
only one t-shirt
and how wonderful was the teaching mode
there i remember my
favorite lesson was to hit the local
pond
a shallow pond where they would all jump
in and it would be an exercise
in life sciences it could be laws of
physics they would do surface tension
so it was an amazing site and to me what
is embedded in my mind is
that is immersive learning so whenever i
meet a fancy educational technology
person these days talking about
immersive technology
my mind will only go back to that
original thought
of children jumping into water or truly
immersive experiences
now we find that
if the jobs of today
are going to be very different from what
they are in the future
then how do you prepare for jobs which
don’t exist today
almost all of you will be working
eventually in jobs
which are categories which don’t exist
today so how do you
really get ahead for those kind of jobs
when you don’t know what those jobs
are how will you prepare for it today
the paradigm shift here would be
that we essentially learn to learn
so whenever we are faced with a certain
project or a certain assignment
which needs certain skill sets we should
be able to learn the skills
at that very moment so that we perform
and complete that task
this will be a mode of life long
learning
which will ensure that not only do you
stay young
which will be a very happy you know
collateral benefit
but ensure that whatever future job
opportunities come up
you are always ready for it now uh
i am reminded of one
terrible tragedy which happened you know
2004 where you all remember the asian
tsunami
it so happened that my mother was in the
abdomen islands at that time
and she witnessed firsthand a very
severe
earthquake people know the tsunami but
not the earthquake part
she was very close to the epicenter so
it was a very violent earthquake
and later on news reports did come out
that about 200 000 people around that
part of the world i died
so when my mother returned to the
mainland and she told us about the
sheer agony and the aftermath of the
tragedy
so that spurred us to do a musical
a kind of a disaster preparedness
theater show based on the life story of
a girl who was on holiday with the
family
on the coast of ireland and when she saw
suddenly that the water had gone back
and the seabed was exposed with
fish flopping around she remembered a
school geography lesson
saying that the water will come back
this time is a very big wave
and it’s going to smash everything it’s
called as a giant tsunami
she told her parents who immediately
warned the lifeguards on the beach there
and everyone was cleared from that beach
with the result that that was the only
spot on the entire house
where no one died so if we can import
theater through theater disaster
preparedness which is one of the goals
of the united nations uh she’s at the
united nations with
the ambassador of the disaster
preparedness at that time
being president bill clinton and uh this
show in fact we performed in front of mr
rahul
and he couldn’t get up although we were
told that he’d be there because ten
minutes
he stayed for the entire show for nearly
an hour and a half
now the power of theater to bring home
learning of even great topics can not be
exaggerated so we must really focus on
how to bring learning in the future
even of the greatest subjects through
theater to make it more relatable for
the students
let’s now talk a little bit about black
holes
we all know that they suck away right
from
uh matter they didn’t take away your
life the gravity is so powerful even
light can’t escape
but do you know that even time cannot
escape
and do you know that those black holes
are the ones which are in your hands
or maybe your pockets we are talking of
course
of your mobile phones absolutely right
now the thing is
statistics show the sheer number of
notifications people get and the amount
of time
people are spending on the mobile
generally for
non-productive things is going to be the
biggest bug fair
for your future growth so if we can
guard against that
and somehow get on top of you know the
urge to
pick it up with every single thing then
we are going to be
vastly richer with time and that will
ensure
that we have uh more bandwidth to
accomplish
much more and there will be no
competition in front of us because
others are all
dropping in their combines so that’s one
good point to keep in mind
as us you know because mobile have
become virtually
weapons of mass destruction uh because
they become weapons of mass
distraction but in my mind they can be
made into weapons of you know mass
disruption in a positive way how by
using it for your vocabulary development
or instant research or
several positive things for which mobile
can be used
it can really kind of save our life and
particularly in this tweet
tick-tock work right so we find that
till now
students have been rewarded mainly for
rote learning
but the future belongs to critical
thinkers people who can solve problems
people who can address
real life problems and real world
problems
and learn how to apply knowledge to come
up with
solutions so that needs to be needs to
be the approach for future
to ensure that we are going to be
solving
the needs of whichever pop up at that
time
rather than rely purely on memory
techniques because those are not going
to get ahead in future
when it comes to logical reasoning we
find that
uh sudoku is a great help particularly
when you know uh
getting students to learn the process of
elimination which in fact
is a great thing uh for for example uh
people applying for standardized tests
i’m a master trainer for gre sap and so
on
a lot of times we are inculcating in
students the process of elimination
so if a student can pick it up in a fun
way solving puzzles like
uh sudoku that’s a great way to go ahead
or out of the box thinking with nine dot
puzzles we find those are the ways to
build
future readiness so that is something
which
i will strongly advocate that uh your
presentation skills
your copywriting skills how to write
persuasively
these are going to be your vital tickets
for future readiness
and uh i’m reminded of course since i’m
from the stock market world warren
buffet was once asked
which is the greatest skill that you
think
anyone needs for preparing for tomorrow
and he straight away said
not about investments or not about stock
markets he talked only about public
speaking
so that is a great lesson for you to
have that
this is the utmost skill that you need
to attach importance to
to ensure that you have a place under
the sun
and uh they’re going to stock markets of
course
which has been my first love uh
you know they are always hunting for uh
multi battles now what are multibaggers
these are shares stocks which go up not
just by
10 30 but they go up manifold
we talked about five times ten times so
they’re called five battles or
you know ten tigers but looking around
this room with wonderful
talent and such potential being exuded
i can see 100 tigers and thousand
backers
so i’m waiting very much for the day
when
you and you will be here on the red dot
which will then become a much bigger red
dot to reflect
your progress and me watching you
to see the exploits that you have
what you’ve accomplished and what great
ideas you will contribute for furthering
humanity
thank you