Festival of inclusive innovations for social transformation (FIIST)
The ecosystem for inclusive innovations and enterprises has begun to take shape slowly and slowly, after humble beginnings by the Honey Bee Network thirty years ago
As the summer of 2019 approaches near, we need to ask a few questions. How and what will technology and management sciences youth and school children celebrate this summer? Will they engage with the unmet social, ecological, industrial needs and try to make first such inventory to propel our scientific and technological pursuits? We propose to celebrate such connections in our forthcoming conference iccig.org
It is not the first time I m appealing to educationists, MSME and other sectoral secretaries for forging such connections. But this time I want to appeal to the young students and their social networks. Why should youth wait for the directions from others particularly when policy makers may not see the potential of such connections yet. The problems of micro and small enterprises.can not wIt too long.
What can youth do?
They should realise that the there is a lot to learn from those who have overcome their inertia, tried an innovative solution to a local problem and then ventured further to take it to market. Such micro and small entrepreneurs often struggle a lot to keep their neck above the water. They may not have time to do further research and development or innovation. Many entrepreneurs look at the trend and try to imitate existing solutions, not always very widely. Sickness in this sector is huge and many don't get a chance to get out of the economic quagmire in which they get trapped. Sone of them face technological challenges while other face managerial problems and sone both.
If the third year students go out in the field and depending upon their interest, start benchmarking the existing problems precisely. At the same time they also search for outstanding solutions developed by field functionaries. All of them should begin with the study of hotspots of creativity in various sectors. Those interested in health and nutrition will like to look at the communities and enterprises which have minimal spend on health related contingencies. Thus they will figure out who certain entrepreneurs and community leaders keep their staff/members healthy? Whst are the lessons which communities having high disease burden can learn about. Same way, which villages or schools have zero or minimal
Malnutrition and why?
Those interested in industrial activities will find out the units which produce least waste, have minimal energy consumption or productivity loss. Their lessons might help the less efficient units.
Some students will Also find problems which need new solution. They may be encouraged to design final
Year project based on such leads. The cluster association may incentivise such selection of the problem by the students.
Faculty may also incentivise projects on real problems (see illustrations techpedia.in).
Many such ideas will be discussed in the fourth international conference on creativity and innovation at grassroots organised by the Honey Bee Network at IIMA, jan. 28-30,2019. We will also have about sixty winners of Gandhian young Technolgical Innovation Awards ( gyti.techpedia.in) attending the iccig.org to share their journey. More than seventy school Teachers from government or municipal Schools from all over the country ( though majority from Gujarat and Maharashtra) will Share their innovations. Iccig will thus become a Festival Of inclusive Innovations for Social Transformation (FIIST) henceforth.
We hope that young students/ scholars/compassionate policy makers and public administrators will review the innovations fr possible scale up support. Both GIAN's incubator gianastre set up in collaboration with Gujarat government and SRISTI incubator Bionest supported by BIRAC will connect their incubatees with the top mentors and technologists.
The ecosystem for inclusive innovations and enterprises has begun to take shape slowly and slowly, after humble beginnings by the Honey Bee Network thirty years ago. You are welcome to join this movement and bring your voluntary energy in support of creative, collaborative and conscientious communities and individuals.
The author is founder of Honey Bee Network & visiting faculty at IIM-A
anilgb@gmail.com