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