A school for innovations on the lines of the University of Tokyo’s i.school will come up on the premises of Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IIT-H). While the IIT-H will act as the nodal agency and take the lead role, it would rope in some other institutes from across the nation to make this idea a reality. This was announced by Professor U.B. Desai, Director, IIT-H, while addressing students at a three-day workshop on the i.school, held at the institute on Sunday. He said innovators needed to think ahead and possess the nature of risk-taking.
i.school is an educational project established in 2009 by the Centre for Knowledge Structuring, University of Tokyo, with the aim of fostering innovative leaders. This institute has been conducting workshops at IIT-H for the past five years with a mix of students from IIT-H and the University of Tokyo. The workshop is being facilitated by Professor Hideyuki Horii, Executive Director, i.school.
“The innovation workshop is nothing but the processing of information by a group of people. There are three types of creativity — combination, exploration and transformation — that turns an idea into reality. Innovators should have the skill sets, the mindset and the motivation [for it],” said Professor Horri, while addressing the students.
Professor Horii also explained how ‘creative destruction’ — breaking a device to learn its inner workings — has transformed the way students think. He stressed the need for human-centred innovations.
