What are the most compelling challenges businesses face right now and how ought they be dealt with? These were some of the questions that came up at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) Business – Academia Conclave (SBAC) on January 20, 2018. It was curated and organised by SPJIMR and Founding Fuel.
SBAC 2018 was witness to deep conversations and lively discussions with some of the finest minds from India and other parts of the world and focused on how established corporations and agile startups are coming together to innovate.
This is Part 4 of a four-part series.
Societal Platforms
Sanjay Purohit, Strategic Advisor, EkStep Foundation, is passionate about driving innovation co-creations and he is applying his learning and experience to develop Societal Platforms—or open digital co-creation networks. Madan Padaki founded 1Bridge, a rural services platform with a vision of transforming rural youth to be entrepreneurs.
In this video, Purohit extrapolates certain fundamental principles from the foundations’ work in the education sector—learnings and outcomes that the global development community is watching carefully. And Padaki applies it back through his experiences in the field.
Ekstep’s mission: increase access to learning opportunities for 200 million children by 2020.
The challenge before them: This is population-level change. And you are dealing with widely varying contexts, extreme scarcity of resources, and deep and intense requirements in capacity building.
“You are talking about a scale that no single entity or initiative could address,” says Purohit. EkStep’s approach, therefore, is to build the underlying digital infrastructure to drive multi-disciplinary innovation. Create a free platform, an open source public good. So that Samaj, sarkar and bazaar (civil society organisations, state and market) can all innovate on top of these platforms.
“If we are entrepreneurial, we have to believe the world around us is entrepreneurial and provide that catalyst initiative,” adds Padaki.
Also Watch
How large firms and startups are partnering to drive the innovation agenda
Transforming the soul of the enterprise
Smart people don’t work for you
Agile start-ups, large firms and a jugalbandi for innovation
