iCamp - I for Innovation

The much awaited iCamp held on Feb 23, 08 was quite a success. This was my second barcamp after the KAMP. And without a doubt, I have become addicted to these unconferences for the sheer simplicity, openness and the felxibility it provides.

The topics were very interesting ranging from What is innovation to How to innovate and connecting humanitarian and spirituality to innovation.

An interesting session on Innovation in MBA education was quite interseting and offline discussions on this topic extending to how the scope can be scaled to introducing innovation at all education levels and not restricting this to just MBAs.

Another interesting fact that emerged was that the topics although revolved around IT largely, quite an amount of examples were drawn from non-IT fields too and this did not limit to just products but to addressing to hot topics like Bangalore traffic jams. Kalyan's topic touched this to a large extenct and so was Henry's presentation.

With a good number of enthusiasts, the entire session was very interactive with a zero dull moment throughout the day.

The session cocluded with Knowledge Cafe with round table discussion over coffee, jelabis and samosa on "Does Process help or hurt innovation". The result was quite interesting that a large amount of campers felt that process is very much required however without a mandate or restriction.

Thanks Raj for the Knowledge Cafe concept, now the campers look forward to the K-cafe as much as they look forward to barcamps I am sure.


My key learning from the camp are:

1. Ideation is a process while Innovation is a Practice - Ideation is talk while innovation is walk - So talk the walk is a must for an innovation to take place.

2. Innovation can draw inspiration from all walks of life - Observe, learn, think and implement based on the context.

3. All innovations need not be radical - even a small change in the experience and the way we do things better could be a great innovation

4. Innovation should be introduced at student life - the earlier the better (Catch them young...)

Thanks Prakash for initiating, planning and successfully conducting the iCamp. Missed Navneet in the entire camp.

Relevant Education Curriculum

The other day, met a few friends from Foundation and was discussing relevance of certain subjects and topics at the school. Incidentally, came across Kenny Jacob's (http://www.kenneyjacob.com) website and found a similar topic on his page too.

Relevance of certain subjects and topics has always been a prime discussion in the education field. While some of us have been fighting for introducing more relevant subjects like life skills at the school level, some conservatives still fight it out for the traditional methods. While per Se, I am not against the traditional methods, I would also like to see introduction of certain life skill topics like public speaking, leadership skills, Analysis as against by-heart etc. Also, certain parameters on which a student is tested also looks outdated to me (e.g: handwriting!). How important is it for a student to be judged on handwriting and get lower scores coz of this? Knowledge is knowledge whether the student can write it out or say it out.

A serious thinking needs to be done on this and a awareness needs to be created at the schools and college levels on relevance and irrelevance of certain subjects at the school and college levels. Also, the time has now come to involve industry specialists in designing the course wears and curriculum for the students.

More thoughts on this is welcome please.