Prof. Anil K. Gupta, IIM-A Shares his Experiences with IIT Kanpur MBA Students

Prof. Anil K. Gupta, IIM-A Shares his Experiences with IIT Kanpur MBA Students

On 3rd August 2007, Friday, IIT Kanpur played host to Prof. Anil K. Gupta from IIM Ahmedabad who was here to share his experience of grassroots innovations under the title - "Inverting the Bottom of the Economic Pyramid: Building Upon Grass Roots Innovations". Dr. Gupta is currently a Professor at the Centre for Management in Agriculture.

Prof. Gupta is the recipient of Padma Shri and President of SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies & Institutions) and Editor of Honey Bee (a newsletter on indigenous innovations). He was adjudged as one of the Star Personalities of Asia among the fifty leaders at the forefront of change by Business Week, New York, and received Asian Innovation Award Gold from Far Eastern Economic Review for coordinating SRISTI and Honey Bee Network.

Dr. Gupta said that since our freedom our policy makers could not envisage the knowledge based approach to economic development of monetarily deprived, the poor were thought to be consumers and not providers. Innovation was considered privilege of so called 'Knowledgeable'. He added that apart from the knowledge, poor are rich in ethics and values. He talked about ways of knowing, feeling and doing, "Samvedna, Sampreshan, Samskar". He combined economics with ethics and spirituality, "Loving, Living and Learning", and gave his insight on "Creativity, Compassion and Collaboration".

Dr. Gupta said that innovations at the grassroot level have potential to carve a niche in the global market. The need is that our engineers, managers and entrepreneurs come forward and help these innovations to be realized as marketable ideas. The IITs and IIMs are considered as institutes of excellence delivering path-breaking matter year after year. But to what extent have these been successful in finding, funding and maintaining the innovations of the people at the bottom of the pyramid. He proposed the idea that the innovations these grassroot people make could be used as raw materials for the students of the IITs and IIMs. The future is in IT, IT not as in Information Technology, but IT as in Indian Talent. Every year if some of these innovations are taken up by students for refinement and enhancement, the day is not far when we can truly call ourselves a knowledge economy built by the real IT (Indian Talent).

Concluded.

Contributed by -
Deepak Jethlia & Neha Bhardwaj,
PR & Media Relations Cell,
Department of Industrial & Management Engineering, IIT Kanpur.