CollPoll Innovation Day at Surana College

“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.”

-Theodore Levitt

The above quote subtly differentiates creativity from innovation, like they are two sides of a river. The bridge between them is the will to work, to climb a slippery slope consciously without a fear of failure. This will comes from the motivation to solve any problem that positively brings about a change. On these lines, CollPoll held its very first ‘Innovation Day’ at Surana College. The event was attended by first and second year batches of the MBA stream, and a host of eminent personalities who presented engaging and interesting talks on innovation and their life journeys. Dr. G.P. Sudhakar, Director of Surana College graced the occasion with his presence.

The day kicked off with a keynote by Pranav Awasthi, who has previously worked with Oracle for 10 years leading teams in the product and logistics domains. He is also an advisor to Butterfly Innovations, the parent company working on CollPoll. He spoke on ‘Innovation’ in an expansive and elaborate context. He said that “Innovation is me and you, it is here, it is all of us. If you want to capture something larger than yourself, you have to innovate.”

He also explained how creativity itself inspires the need to craft something new that benefits a wide audience. Unless that creativity is encouraged, new systems, inventions and discoveries fail to emerge. The linchpin of his talk was that, an innovator isn’t afraid of discovering new oceans by losing sight of his shore.

Next up was an engaging “Young Entrepreneurs” Panel with Abhishek Raju and Raman Shrivastava with Vilok Bhatia as the moderator. Raman Shrivastava is the founder of Fitsome Inc. dealing with Artificial Intelligence and Abhishek Raju is the Director of Dhruva Space Pvt Ltd. The panellists shared stories of their personal experiences, trends in the market and what makes an innovators tick in any industry.

Speaking about his experience, Raman Shrivastava quoted passion to be the most important ingredient, “Any skill can be learnt at the end of the day. What’s more important is if a person has the passion and whether his heart is completely into it”. Abhishek Raju encouraged an outgoing and fearless attitude towards innovation. He said, “Learn something new, try and apply it. You don’t have to wait to reach a certain milestone before you can do something”.

Post lunch, a workshop on the ‘Business Model Canvas’ was conducted by Team CollPoll for both the batches. Students were divided into groups of 12-14 and mentors from among the CollPoll team were assigned to each. The groups were given the task of coming up with a problem that presents a business opportunity and one which could be solvable on a community or city-wide scale. Once the problem was successfully identified, the groups’ next task was coming up with a solution for their respective problems. The groups then dived deep and worked upon their respective business ideas on 3 parts of the business model canvas – cost structure, key resources and revenue streams. Once they had their model in place, the students had to then go on stage to present their ideas to the entire crowd. The highlight of the workshop was not only the exuberance and creativity of students working in a group, but also the attention to detail and specificity of work the students put in.

Two groups had a common problem, namely the dearth of BMTC buses in Bangalore. Their solutions however, were unique and interesting. Where one proposed introducing hop on-hop off autos for short point to point transport & a carpooling app for longer distances; the other group spoke about manufacturing double-decker buses and double compartment flat buses to carry more passengers. One of the groups spoke about recycling waste near their college, even specifying the GSM of the plastic they’d manufacture from recycling the waste! Another problem of note was the migration of farmers from the outskirts of Bangalore into the city. The solution the group with this problem proposed was a customized container truck to transport milk, vermin-compost, dung for fertilizer and poultry altogether for villages around Bangalore.

Our “CollPoll Innovation Day” at Surana received an ecstatic response from students and faculty alike. Speaking about the workshop, Prashant P.B., Assistant Professor – MBA at Surana College said “Thanks for the workshop. I felt it was a great success and I hope we will have your team come in for further workshops in the future”. The opportunity to learn something new and think as entrepreneurs was well appreciated by the students of Surana College. And at the end of the day, that was the most important takeaway from CollPoll’s Innovation Day!