The Centre for creativity, innovation and design thinking’ is an initiative headed by by Prof Cedric Serpes, Associate Professor, Goa Institute of Management. He spoke to Ajit John answered questions about the motive behind setting it up and the future goals.
Herald: When did this program commence and who is in charge of it?
Cedric Serpes: This initiative was started in Goa Institute of Management (GIM) about a year ago with 4 other centres and each centre has a Professor in charge. The Centre for Creativity, Innovation and Design Thinking has a team of Professors Dr Nitin Upadhyay, KanuKatyal and V Padmanaban on the team with Cedric Serpes as the Chairperson in charge.
Herald: How many students participate in this program?
CS: Each of the 4 Centres have a manifesto that drives long term and short term goals. The centre for creativity is committed to provide creative and innovative training opportunities both in and out of the classroom. So the opportunities are open to all, including faculty. As opportunities like theatre, music, dance, art and filmmaking are provided, we get a lot of participation.
Herald: What do you think is the most important challenge facing the young Indian management student as he or she prepares to work in the corporate world?
CS: Ideas. This nation needs more ideas if we are to align ourselves with Prime Minister Modi’s “make in india” initiative. When global companies invest in India, they will need young and dynamic idea generators. To succeed, our young managers will need big ideas. They will need problem solving skills. Even if they are looking at being entrepreneurs, without a big idea you have nothing to sell. At work they need to develop sustainable innovations. They need to think like designers.
Herald: As the Centre for Innovation what is your agenda this year, do you intend to create new technology?
CS: The centre is still young and we are currently looking at intensifying our on campus training bringing in world class trainers in various disciplines. Long term we are looking at being a resource to the industry to solve problems in various aspects. We are planning to use Theatre to teach students better Leadership skills. According to Deborah Gruenfeld, who teaches “Acting with power” at Stanford. “Everybody has sides of themselves that they don’t use often, but what learning to act does is give you an opportunity to find the parts of yourself that can relate to the characters and the role you are playing.”
We have just created our first design thinking cell consisting of volunteer students. They will be trained to solve problems using the Stanford d-school model. This step by step guide helps participants to move from insights to ideas, using skills like empathy, observation, brainstorming and prototyping.
We have also just initiated Take-5, a student driven group that does video interviews with guest speakers by asking them 5 questions. The result goes on to social media.
Herald: How does a program like this help a student?
CS: The centre drives learning at 2 levels in class and out of class. In class with a 3 credit course of Creativity, Innovation and design thinking held at the sanquelim campus and a 2 credit course at Ribandar campus for Executive MBA part time students. Out of class with music, theatre, dance and visual communication. These activities, both in the class and out, teach students discipline, empathy, teamwork, spatial judgement, language and meaning, bio mimicry, techniques to see ideas and solutions, make connections, and express complex ideas using metaphors.
Herald: Can you also share with us a brief of the Last years experience on the Centre?
CS: Last year we formed GIM’s first open band concept called OXYGIM. It provides the space, instruments and training to students to work as groups to create music. This skill is invaluable for mangers. Under the flagship name, there are no fixed musicians. Teams are formed to do music sets on stage. Collaboration and diversity is the key to this activity. We also held workshops on photography, documentary film making, theatre.Last year we held a photo exhibition Drishti, at the Kala Academy. Over 30 of the best photos were on display from faculty and students.
