Next Steps: Nurturing unplanned innovations

The response to the column last week was very enthusiastic and I am convinced that the idea of Innovation Park should not be given up. Several colleagues wrote back offering resources, ideas, skills, infrastructure and in some cases, just the spirit. We still have to find locations in Ahmedabad (land and building) where we could make Innovation Park

accessible to the people on the street, in the schools, institutions and homes. Many potential supporters suggest that we should draw up a plan to work so that we can start even in a rented building without waiting for everything to fall in place. That is how everything has been started in Honey Bee Network, why should Innovation Park then be an exception.

Any sanctuary for sustainable ideas should recognise and respect premature abortion of majority of ideas. Depth of an idea is no less beautiful than the birth. Much depends upon whether the manure of the old ideas can nurture the new one. We will need cartoonist, illustrators and other graphic artists who would illustrate the journey of ideas. We will mock at ourselves and will also mock at the established power or authority. Irreverence has to be the bedrock from which ideas will spring.
Not all ideas will be useful and in fact feasibility should not be made an enemy of desirability. Few years ago when somebody talked about wireless transfer of electricity, people would laugh at it. But a few days ago, this idea was included in the top ten ideas at world economic forum.

Once we identify the locations, we should display some of the interesting ideas along with blank spaces to be filled up by strangers. We should let people build upon each other’s ideas and take these along various tangential directions. The Fablab set up in collaboration with MIT Boston will be accessible to those who want to Fablab set up in collaboration with MIT Boston will be accessible to those who want to fabricate new things and also those who want to help others realize their ideas. It is natural that there will be some conflict and arguments about who has made how much contribution to which idea. There will be a boxing ring and wrestling ground for resolving these conflicts. And if some of the conflicts remain unresolved we will ask them to sweep the river front on the banks of Sabarmati and Kankaria so that they can appreciate contribution of those who often remain anonymous.

We will also create a photography and culinary lab. Photographs of the process of innovation in different creative activities will be an important part of the memoryscape (Schuman, 1998). Idea competition will be organised in different municipal and other schools about new products and services or improvement in existing products and services or even Utopia. the selected kids will be invited to the lab to fructify their ideas. Even the kids dropped out of schools or working in tea shops or assisting vegetable vendors or any other activity will also be encouraged to participate in the idea fest/contest so that the lab is accessible to them as much as to anybody else. Children will also be encouraged to critique some of the perverse educational practices followed in elite schools such as asking student to wite about the advertisement of commercial products and thereby expanding their market, converting children into consumer of products rather than relevant knowledge. Unless children are taught to question unethical and unprofessional practices at an early age, they will always be compliant, congruent and conformists.

I hope that the readers interested in joining the mission will sign up for

innovationpark@googlegroups.com . There is no way that the spirit of innovation in the field of education, culture, institution and technology can be stifled. The idea of Innovation Park remains on the anvil and the children and workers in the formal and informal sectors will perhaps lead it. Waiting
for more volunteers and contributors to join. I met a group of young kids called as Dare to Share at Climate Championship Fair in Kadvibai Virani Kanya Vidyalaya, Rajkot. We need more such groups daring to share, learning to care…

Anil K Gupta