After providing a platform to enthusiastic entrepreneurs through initiatives such as T-Hub and WE-Hub, the State Government has resolved to take the culture of innovation to the grassroots.
The focus of the initiative is to bring out creativity and channelise it towards innovation to help solve problems. The government is of the belief that creativity is a resource that can lead to many innovations and solve problems faced at the local level with minimum intervention.
Telangana State Innovation Cell (TSIC), the nodal agency for fostering a culture of innovation, hosted ‘T-Innovation Mahotsavam’ on April 21, to mark World Creativity and Innovation Day, with the theme #stepoutandinnovate in gram panchayats across the State with support from the Panchayat Raj department. An ‘Hour of Innovation’ — a webinar featuring students from different colleges — was conducted on the occasion to introduce students to design thinking.
As part of the T-Innovation Mahotsavam, teams of TSIC visited villages and conducted the hour for innovation wherein people were sensitised to the importance of innovators who broke stereotypes to find solutions to local problems. In the process, they were given the opportunity to identify problem statements, and steps were taken to enable them to come up with solutions on the spot. The teams took note of existing solutions to pertinent problems, besides recording concerns raised by the people.
Problems common among various villages across the 33 districts would be identified, and further scrutinised by the TSIC teams. This would be followed by mapping of the existing innovations or they would come up with new ones.
According to State chief innovation officer Shanta Thoutam, the ‘Hour of Innovation’ is one of its kind initiative by the TSIC to kindle the latent creativity in people at the grassroots and develop solutions. The programme envisages educating people at the grassroots about the progressive ecosystem in the State. In the process, the TSIC scouted for many innovations through its flagship programmes and these individuals came up with frugal solutions to address challenges at their level.
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The other aim of the programme is to increase awareness among people on using problem-solving and design thinking to address issues they face in their daily life through frugal solutions.
IT secretary Jayesh Ranjan appreciated the TSIC for coming up with a unique mechanism in the name of ‘Hour for Innovation’ to reach the common man at the grassroots as part of the innovation ecosystem. The State has achieved several milestones in innovation since its formation and is now focussing on encouraging problem solvers and innovators across the 33 districts, he said.
As part of the webinar organised in government colleges in association with Y-Hub and Inqui-Lab Foundation, students were educated about the importance of creativity and innovation in everyday life and were encouraged to pursue innovative ideas. The webinar was aimed at making students understand that innovation and creativity were inclusive, and that innovation was all about developing a indset where anyone can be creative.
Panchayat Raj secretary Sandeep Kumar Sultania said innovations scouted and recognised through TSIC needed scaling opportunities and the department was willing to extend support as needed. He suggested that departments that needed frugal and technical solutions for addressing grassroots-level challenges can procure the innovations so that they could be commercialised.
