A creativity and innovation workshop was organised for students of PGDM, Batch (2017-2019) by Dr Pavan Soni- an established Entrepreneur, on 25th July 2017 at ISBR campus as a part of orientation program. With the economic climate changing rapidly and companies looking at their people as their best and strongest asset- to help them survive and thrive, the workshop focused on identifying the hidden creative strengths of the students and understanding and utilizing the process creativity.
Dr Pavan Soni, an Innovation Evangelist by profession and a teacher by passion gave us an idea about the current scenario of education and opportunities for management graduates in India. He told us about the number of students who graduate every year and the problems faced by them to secure a job as securing a job has become very tough due to automation in each and every sector.
The economy is rapidly growing due to automation of entire industry. For example with introduction of ATMs and cash counting machines the manual work which was carried on by an individual person previously has now decreased. It saves time and reduces stress but on the other hand it has also reduced the job opportunities for people. Hence the three mantras told by Indra Nooyi were highlighted by Dr Pavan for creating new jobs which are as follows-
- Be a lifelong learner
- Put all your senses into whatever work you are doing
- Allow people to grow along with you
We were then split into 6 teams and were told to visit places like Petrol Pump, Toll booth, Traffic police, CISF guards, Police station, and construction workers to find out the problems faced by them during their job and to come up with a solution for that problem in a creative way.
- The students who headed towards toll booth interacted with the workers at both the electronic city toll booth and the silk board toll booth. The problems noticed by the students included unavailability of proper food facility and no washrooms near the toll booth which were considered as major problems for all the employees working there.
- Workers of the petrol pump of electronic city phase 1were facing problems regarding long working hours, unavailability of credits,low salary, and health issues due to the continuous exposure to the petrol.
- The problems faced by traffic police included political influence on the policemen, health issues, less social respect, non-cooperation by civilians.
- The next group of students went to the police station and interacted with the policemen. Their problems were they getting lower salary as compared to other states of India, extended working hours they need to file the complaint first in their register and then need do the same thing in their systems, lack of staff, poor surveillance facility and unavailability of canteen and proper food.
- Some of the students went to the construction site. The problems of the construction workers included lack of opportunity, fixed source of income and longer working hours.
- The students who went to the CISF concluded that their problems include lesser time to spend with their family, lesser medical facility and lack of social life.
At last all the students together came up with the solutions to help the petrol pump staff which was providing face mask to all the workers working at the petrol pump at minimal charges, which the staff of the petrol pump were very glad to accept.
Other group of students came up with idea to help traffic policemen by suggesting different companies to do their CSR activities exclusively for traffic policemen.
This entire exercise organised by Dr Pavan Soni gave us an idea about how we all can develop our creative skills. It also provided us the knowledge of how to use a range of creative thinking methods, tools and techniques to generate ideas and solve problems beneficial for as well as for the people around us.