Well, to share the possible reason which I discovered or at least which I could perceive, leadership and innovation in an academic institution, today, is the sine qua non. And, Why Do I say So? We, the members of academic fraternity, are responsible for teaching students who pursue technical and management courses albeit theoretically as well as lab-based work as a part of the curriculum. Fair enough, but this binds us in silos and if we do not lead ourselves to innovate ourselves, our knowledge, our willingness to develop new insight will stagnate. To illustrate, let me take an example. Consider, 7P’s of marketing which is the crux or marketing (our what was considered to be the crux) is now extended to 9P’s of marketing. This generates the trigger to lead myself to innovate myself. For 8P of marketing stands for Packaging and 9P of marketing relates to productivity.
The onus is on ourselves to determine what are the constituents of packaging for a manufactured product or a service-oriented product and so goes the case to productivity in the same parlance. Still not clear, let me go into specifics. Suppose as a manager, splits a task to be done by 2 persons. The productivity parameters are now to be evaluated, for each individual, in the context of difficulty, complexity and so on. Hence to determine the productivity parameters, I have to lead myself to innovate myself in determining the productivity parameters for each of the worker. For example, the worker A1 is slow, while A2 does the work quickly but he is an excellent procrastinator. Hence, I have to lead myself to identify and develop productivity parameters and evaluate both of these workers to arrive at their productivity score.
On the other hand, If I am from a technical academic fraternity involved in demonstrating to the students of developing solution to problem statements. I am invariably, faced with the process of how to lead myself and innovate myself to assist the students in adopting the correct approach for arriving at the solution. This is necessary, in fact, it is the first step towards developing the industry-based software solutions as students pursuing software courses are drilled in theoretical concepts of software development life cycle. Further, in a software industry, student is not confined to coding instead he has to apply the concepts of database, testing, requirements management and other stages which are essential for developing real time applications. This is the reality of the industrial world. in other words, the industry, invariably looks for application of the theoretical knowledge in developing solutions. In to achieve this I have to lead myself to innovate myself in showing to the students how to apply the theoretical concepts of data structures, data design, data modelling and configuration management to real life applications
Numerous examples exist in the IT industry wherein stalwarts have demonstrated the art of leading myself to innovate myself and have really impacted our life. Mark Zuckerberg, lead himself to innovate himself to develop Facebook, a platform wherein several users stay connected to share their experiences while remaining connected. In a similar manner, Samuel Harris Altman led himself to innovate himself and conceived the concept of open AI and revolutionized the business world.
Moving away from technical to a more ubiquitous example which we are familiar with, we have Quick Commerce in India. The owners of Groffers, Blinkit , Zepto and Instamart, led themselves to innovation and develop the concept of convenience led culture. Today this culture is revolutionizing the existence of E-Commerce.
Still, take the case of our cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. He constantly led himself to innovate himself and become a world class cricket.
So, dear members of our academic fraternity constantly lead yourself to innovate yourself and establish a niche for yourself
Well, that’s leading myself to innovate myself. Happy reading!!!!!
Author: Mr. Sanjive Saxena, Associate Professor
