Anil K. Gupta, Professor at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Executive vice-chair of National Innovation Foundation (NIF) called upon the students to think differently. Citing an example, he said, “T. Chris Anant was a 1st class student. Despite his young age and knowledge he innovated a shoe that sucks dust and works as the smallest vacuum cleaner.”
Dr. Gupta was delivering a lecture on ‘Affordable and accessible excellence through empathetic green innovations: sustainability through selective disruption’ at Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IITH) on Wednesday.
“Creativity is in our genes. We are all creative but we do not trust our ideas,” he said adding that not all ideas come from within, but sometimes from outside. Stating that there are four types of teachers from whom one can learn, Dr. Gupta said that one can learn from the teacher within, teachers around peers, the teacher in nature and teacher among common people. He explained that the Shodh Yatra being taken up by the NIF teams across the nation as ‘education beyond walls.’
Referring to the challenges being faced by the society, the Professor said that still 250 million people are using firewood for cooking and that needs to be addressed still.
“Technology is like words, institutions are like grammar and culture is thesaurus. We have to blend all these along with passion, purpose and performance through a platform. We can produce high-tech solutions at lower cost that nobody can do in the world,” he said adding that India need to become an uploading society than downloading as it was happening now. IITH Director Prof. Desai, Prof. Mitra and Prof. Chandrasekhar Sharma and others were present.
