The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Power of dreams in focus at Kurukshetra

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Power of dreams in focus at Kurukshetra

Staff Reporter

Top space official stresses importance of lateral thinking

Photo: V. Ganesan

Chandrayaan Project Director Mylswamy Annadurai (centre) and Anna University Vice Chancellor P. Mannar Jawahar in discussion at the inauguration of Kurukshetra 2011 on Wednesday. Senior vice president and Head of Innovation, Cognizant, Sukumar Rajagopal, is in the picture

CHENNAI: Inspiring words about the power of dreams peppered the halls of the College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University on Wednesday as Kurukshetra 2011, the annual techno-management festival, got under way.

Inaugurating the festival, Mylswamy Annadurai, Chandrayaan Project Director, Indian Space Research Organisation, said that the courage to dream and the perseverance to follow it up can make everyone an IITian.

Expanding the acronym IIT, he said that it stands for Involvement, Innovation and Team work. All you need to do is come out with an idea and it can change the world, said Dr. Annadurai.

Reminiscing about his childhood days, when as the eldest of seven children, he had to manually operate the wet grinder at home, he said “All I wanted to do in life was to grow up and invent a robotically operated wet grinder,” he said.

When the electric wet grinder eventually did come to his village, he was extremely surprised to see that it was not operated by a robot. “We take the device for granted in our kitchens today. If someone had not thought of evolving a rotating container, instead of designing a robotic hand, it would not have been so cheap and accessible. I learnt that sometimes you have to turn the problem on its head. Innovation need not be a sophisticated solution,” he added.

To stress the point, he said that while NASA was preparing for its moon mission in the 1960s, they invested millions of dollars on designing a fountain pen which would work in microgravity. “But during one of the product review meetings, someone pointed out that a pencil could be used instead,” Dr. Annadurai said.

Asking students to learn from failure and to never give up, he said that there have been a couple of occasions when the sensors on ISRO's satellites probes failed in outer space. It happened even during the Chandrayaan I mission. “Just because the satellite is millions of miles away, you don't give up,” he said.

Sukumar Rajagopal, Senior Vice President and Head of Innovation, Cognizant, delivered the first keynote address of the three-day fest ‘Can innovation be systemised?'. Pointing to the top 1,000 global companies spending $500 billion on research and development in 2009 alone, he said “Most employers value creativity more than rigour, vision, discipline and integrity.” Stating that the human mind is conditioned to avoid the risk of failure, he asked the students to be passionately ambitious about achieving the impossible. Anna University Vice Chancellor P.Mannar Jawahar and Dean, CEG, M. Sekar, spoke.

The Hindu is the media partner for Kurukshetra 2011

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