Innovation is teachable.



A Journey Towards Change!

Atal Tinkering Fest at School
 I have been mentoring students of Ryan International School, Mayur Vihar since 6 months. It has been an overwhelming yet enriching experience for me to see the budding innovators tweaking, failing, learning and finally succeeding at their prototypes. I have realized that my primary role in this journey is to inculcate in them the values and life skills required to become a successful entrepreneur. I facilitate the sessions in Q&A dialogue form so that they think independently and come up with solutions themselves. I have been able to nurture in them many useful traits such as compassion, perseverance, courage, critical thinking etc. My students have surprised me with their talent, curiosity and never-give-up attitude. They have in fact made me a better human being.
We are using Design Thinking(DT) approach(5 stages of design thinking- Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test). DT was adapted for business purposes by David M Kelley, a professor at Stanford University, who also founded the design consultancy IDEO in 1991. A design mindset is not problem-focused, rather it is solution focused and oriented towards creating a preferred future. 

All Projects are up and running!

As a Mentor of Change, AIM, I deliver workshops and mentoring sessions on how to use DT for technological innovations. Students have understood that DT is a human-centric problem solving approach that lays more emphasis on designing the prototype along with the client rather than for the client. Indian society is our client. Thus the society needs to be at the center of the entire process so that out-of-the-box innovative solutions could be put across for solving the very nuanced and specific challenges faced by the people. Students are able to empathize with the difficulties of their community and thus identify the problems that they want to solve. Their projects mostly revolve around some of the biggest issues and challenges of our time- environmental degradation, women’s safety, water conservation, agricultural productivity, public transport etc. Following are some of the projects completed till now- Algae based Air Purifier, Smart blind stick for the elderly and disabled, Bluetooth light controller, Smart railways, Road Safety, Automated water filling system, Smart drip irrigation system. All these models have the potential to contribute immensely to socio-economic development in India. I want to motivate my students to keep innovating so that their ideas and models could be turned into patents as well as real business models in the long run.

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