Ahmedabad Declaration: Second International Conference on Creativity and Innovation at Grassroots (7-8 December 2012, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India)
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Grassroots innovations evolve in response to local problems but not always the ones faced by the innovators themselves. Many times, third party problems inspire the innovators to attempt solutions. Thus, these unaided, self-triggered and self-inspired solutions underlie the pursuit of inclusive development by the Honey Bee Network during the last twenty-four years. The International Conference on Creativity and Innovation at Grassroots provided a platform to scholars, activists, teachers, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and other stakeholders including policy makers both from India and abroad to identify specific milestones that the Network should pursue in the coming decades. The Tianjin Declaration in 2008 had stressed
"Grassroots scientists and technologists have to be enabled to articulate
their excellence, experimental and conservation ethics and educational pedagogies for
achieving equitable, empathetic and efficient allocation of resources and opportunities in
society. Incubation of grassroots innovations and outstanding traditional knowledge in a
distributed, decentralized and social democratic manner provides an opportunity to address global concern for providing solutions to persistent social problems."
The concern for inclusive development has become stronger in the recent times, so has the need for open innovation platforms. Even the formal sector is recognizing that new solutions cannot always emerge from within organizations. The need for recognising, respecting and rewarding creativity in the informal sector has been recognized much more in the last five years. Thus, incentivising various stakeholders such as youth and institutional scientists to engage with individual and community innovators in the informal sector was emphasized strongly in this conference. The willingness of innovators to share their knowledge generously and without the expectation of much reciprocity was also articulated equally strongly. The dialectics of generosity and unfair exchange as well as the need for reciprocity and a lack of attribution reverberated all through the conference. Scientists working on validation of and value addition in grassroots innovations must be encouraged to share the summary of their findings in an easily comprehensible manner with the innovators and knowledge providers in their local language. Several of the recommendations involve use of ICT infrastructure. However, given the digital divide, not many grassroots innovators may be able to use these facilities without some institutional help. The fact that many innovators solve problems without being aware of scientific concepts underlying their ideas means that the awareness about scientific temperament and methodology needs to be increased. Even otherwise, the knowledge about scientific approaches might make the innovative pursuits more efficient. However, without practicing the ethical values underlying the philosophy of the Honey Bee Network, the efficiency of such pursuits will be short-lived.
The conference participants reached a consensus that future strategies for empowering grassroots innovators will have to be more entrepreneurial, collaborative and open in nature. To ensure that opportunities for technological, educational, cultural and institutional innovators at grassroots are expanded meaningfully, the
Ahmedabad Declaration endorses the following:
1) Incentives
2) Dissemination
3) Institution Building and Open Innovation
4) Youth and Education
5) Cultural Creativity
6) Horizontal Supply Chain and Logistics Management
1) Incentives
2) Dissemination
3) Institution Building and Open Innovation
4) Youth and Education
5) Cultural Creativity
6) Horizontal Supply Chain and Logistics Management
Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/anil_gupta_india_s_hidden_hotbeds_of_invention.html
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