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Inaugural
address
Ladies and Gentlemen - It is my pleasant duty on behalf of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and the British Council of India to extend a very warm welcome to each and every one of you! This is a very significant moment both for me personally as I believe it is for the two institutions represented here. For one thing, I am deeply, deeply passionate about India, primarily because I believe in the idea of India! I see myself as an integral part of its hoary culture, its wisdom, its traditions, its philosophers and above all the sheer genius of the Indian mind, notably, its capacity to grasp multiple and even contradictory process simultaneously.
This passion goes so deep that I am unable to distinguish or perceive of myself as being separate from it. And when I ventured into the domain of creativity more than ten years ago, I was able to witness the extraordinary range, depth and intensity of the world of the arts as it obtains in India including its challenges as much as its opportunities.
My association with the arts challenged assumptions that I had secretly nurtured without my being particularly aware of that fact, and I was forced to unlearn an entire superstructure of verity and fiction in order that I discover anew, a journey that I realize today has no destination because it is the journey that is the truth (that is all that actually matters!) and not the end (which frankly, does not matter at all!).
Let me begin by first congratulating all the twenty of you for having successfully made it to the Creative Future School. That is the good news! Better news lies in the fact that the hard work begins now! However, for both of us at IIM Bangalore and the British Council of India, the best news we could possibly receive from you lies in realizing your dreams of becoming successful entrepreneurs in the creative sector. We have gathered here for the next two weeks to jointly promote that endeavor.
Institutionally too, it is a critical yet privileged moment. India’s challenges in the new millennium cannot be met without a creative and strategic mindset that drives the larger national agenda of change and social renewal. This is the objective that IIM Bangalore has set itself and was indeed the purpose for which it was founded: to be market contestable when and where it matters. This means that we attach a lot of importance to impacting the world of entrepreneurship, business and management practice.
What is the purpose of the Creative Future School? It is our explicit intention to provide you with the wherewithal of managing a business in the creative sector. It is about making the transition from merely conceiving of new and often interesting ideas, (creativity) to creating tangible goods and services (innovation). If creativity is about moving away from the standard way of doing things, innovation is about exploiting that idea and making it contestable in the marketplace. We are here to help you make that leap from the world of ideas to the world of action. Making this leap requires being sensitive to the world of business and all that it entails.
"We define creativity", wrote David Tanner, President of Tanner and Associates, Inc., "as the generation of novel, useful ideas. We define innovation as the process for bringing the best ideas to reality. Creativity is a personal act while innovation is often a team effort. The innovation process starts with a need, which triggers a creative idea, which generates a series of innovative events, including demonstration, scale-up, and commercialization."
The objective of the Creative Future School lies in enabling that transformation. It is not our intention to transform you into marketing or financial wizards. That is not the purpose for which you are being exposed to areas such as accounting, finance, marketing, legal issues, strategy, negotiations, networking and market research. Pumping you with mindless megabytes of interesting information is not our intention either. Nor is it our intention to transform you into management pundits.
"Most people", wrote Hal Sirkin of the Boston Consulting Group, "think of innovation only in terms of research and development or new product development - but taking an idea and turning it into cash is an effort that involves almost every part of a company. The challenge is thinking about and managing this extremely broad set of inter-related activity as a unified process." It is the opening up of this mosaic of inter-related activity that informs the substance of the Creative Future School.
We recognize all of you, as entrepreneurs in the creative sector and that you will be deriving your primary sustenance from your creativity. The idea behind exposing you to state-of-the-art fundamentals of managerial tradecraft is to (a) help you recognize the nature of the assistance you need as you grow in your business, (b) help you discriminate the level and the domain in which you need to engage your challenges and (c) become familiar with best practices in your respective domains.
In the process, we certainly hope to raise your aspirations. As Michelangelo once said: "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."
You will be exposed to some of the finest minds in the country and I hasten to add, multiple points of view. Walter Lippman, once said: "Where all think alike, no one thinks very much!" You will find yourself being challenged and we do believe that this is integral characteristic of the Creative Future School. "Unless you are challenged," said Hanya, the German dancer, "there is no work, there is no accomplishment, there is nothing of value, and there is no real test of your strength."
This program is the first of its kind in the country. As you are probably well aware, creative industries have yet to be accorded formal recognition by the Government of India as a sector of legitimate economic activity that contributes to wealth creation, employment, nurturing talent and improving the quality of life. Ladies and Gentlemen! This is strength, not a weakness! It is an unprecedented opportunity, not a threat!
In real terms, this means that the twenty of you gathered
here today would play a pioneering role in institutionalizing
the development of the creative sector in India. You
have been provided an unexpected window of opportunity
to which few have ready access. What all of you accomplish
will do nothing less than define the agenda of the
creative sector in India, inspire other aspiring creative
entrepreneurs and become in the process, role models
worthy of emulation. Such is the nature of the heady
challenge ahead of you! |
In the course of the next two weeks that you will be
with us, we propose to accompany you in an exciting
journey of discovery, deep purpose and self-articulation.
You will be exposed to resource persons coming from
a wide variety of domains and core specialization.
We urge you to exploit their presence and derive value
from the interaction. I sincerely urge you to make
our lives miserable by making unreasonable and extravagant
demands on our time! We are at your individual and
collective disposal to cater to your needs.
Before I close, I would be failing in my duty if I
do not thank the British Council of India, (and Andrew
Senior in particular) for having pioneered such a novel
and unique initiative. I understand that Andrew inspired
the entire concept of the Creative Future School and
all of us present here this morning surely owe him
a deep debt of gratitude. Had it not been for his untiring
efforts, I doubt whether this audacious project would
have been brought to fruition. I wish to place on record
our grateful thanks to him as much as Alice Cicolini,
who initiated our conversation and who is happily,
here with us this morning.
I also wish to express our gratitude to my co-director,
Ms. Lee Corner for having spared her valuable time
and effort in contributing to the program. Lee has
visited us twice already and she must be familiar to
a number of you who were interviewed by her and Anamaria.
Both Lee and Anamaria bring with them an expertise
not to be easily found in the creative sector. They
have played a sterling role in instutionalizing the
creative sector in the UK, are keenly aware of the
pitfalls and opportunities that stand in the way of
its recognition, and bring with them their profound
experience which they generously share with us. I personally
believe there is tremendous value in that sharing between
two very different cultures that aim to speak a common
and universal language. We consider it a privilege
to have them in our midst.
We are also deeply indebted to our guest speakers from
the UK (Kate Jones), as well as members of our jury
for having spared their time and share their wisdom
with us.
There are several other people too numerous to mention,
who have contributed to make the Creative Future School
possible, and it is with particular pleasure that I
record the signal contributions of Shubha Patvardhan
from the British Council in New Delhi, Beatrice Pembroke
from the British Council in the UK, Jaffer Rathi and
Janaka from the British Council in Chennai and an entire
array of British Council staff in Chennai, New Delhi
and Mumbai who have coordinated this huge effort. The
warmth and affection that was lavished upon us by all
of them merits our undisguised appreciation. We wish
to place on record their inestimable effort and express
our profound gratitude to them.
Let me close with an excerpt from the celebrated address
delivered by Steve Jobs to Stanford graduates: "Your
time is limited; so don't waste it living someone else's
life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with
the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the
noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner
voice. And most important, have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition. They somehow already know
what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." Good
luck.
Thank you.
Closing address
Early this morning, I asked myself: have
these two weeks been a defining moment in the lives
of us all? The murmuring assents I hear from all of
you is an eloquent testimony to the success of the
first round of Creative Future School.
Let me begin with a few considerations on the design of Creative Future 1. You would have by now, discerned three relatively distinct streams embedded in the design. These included entrepreneurship skills in the creative sector, tools and techniques integral to managerial tradecraft and finally real life illustrations of entrepreneurship from a multi-billion dollar company like Infosys to other examples drawn from the creative sector.
Our initial idea was to allow you the value of shared experience from our British colleagues --- IIM B provides the expertise and I was to address you. This is how we designed the School. Is this okay? Because CF 2 and 3 will be designed on the basis of your feedback? You are our architects!
The essential idea lay in creating a confluence of the three streams in a manner that they cohere to produce a program that empowers young entrepreneurs to make the leap from creativity to innovation. Our colleagues from the UK handled the first module, while IIM Bangalore handled the second module. The third module consisted of bringing illustrations from the real world into the classroom. Our objective lay in inspiring all of you to discover, deepen and engage with each of your own journeys.
What is more important of the two: culture and context or the universal language of entrepreneurship? Is context important or is entrepreneurship important? I suspect it is both provided that we are sensitive to the insights both have to offer and do not neglect one in favor of the other.
In my last session with you, we evoked multiple metaphors including those of the cocoon, the caterpillar and the butterfly, each symbolizing the crawler, climber and flier. Are we not in reality a mixture of those three qualities. The story contains an extraordinary insight. To the cocoon, the best way to get high is to weave a crawl! To the caterpillar, the best way to get high is to climb! But to the butterfly, the only way it knows to get high is to fly!
Ladies and Gentlemen: you are born to fly, not to climb or crawl! There is an opportunity waiting for you! Go and grab it!
Ambalam
Thank you. |
© Andrew Senior 2006
These are the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the British Council, Reed International or the London Book Fair.
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