How Innovation Fuels Research

Prof. C.N.R. Rao, Bharat Ratna Awardee, National Research Professor, Linus Pauling Research Professor and Honorary President, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research was the first InnovationNXT talk addressing How Innovation Fuels Research.

He began his talk by raising two very important questions - What makes a good researcher? And How come very few people come with great ideas?

As compared to other subjects, Critical Thinking and Creativity are subjects that cannot be taught. Citing one of his favorite scientists - Michael Faraday as an example, according to him, he is the greatest scientist. He said Faraday’s way of thinking was very different.

How did scientists identify problems? How did they get this idea?

Another example he shared was G.N. Lewis, a scientist who every time his ideas were rejected, came up with new ideas; idea after idea. Prof. Rao also spoke about Linus Pauling who said that - To have an idea, first of all, you need to have many great ideas.

Today’s pace in science is a detriment. It is important to Look for ideas; idea mining is the need of the hour. He believes the most Essential Quality Is Simple Mindedness, people in their essence are very messy in terms of their thoughts and they get crazy thereby never discovering anything. All those who invented big things were simple-minded

The Best of schools today don’t have any special treatment for an unusual challenge, people with problems and people who are geniuses all have to go through the same curriculum, give the same exams, there is no special program for special cases.

India is the largest number of young people. Schools are becoming worse as time passes by or are either very expensive; the best schools are actually in villages where voluntary movements exist. He is concerned about the present condition of the schools, the education system and the way these schools are training the future citizens of the country.

The main reason for this concern is the problems mankind is facing like depletion of energy, lack of water. We need a future who can come up with ideas to save mankind. New Problems, new challenges, new Ideas are not easy. Innovation is required in today’s world. To solve the problems of mankind we need young people who can think of problems differently and solutions differently.

He ends his talk saying the Future Of India has to be People who are able to produce great ideas. Politicians need to realize that India needs a strong education system. We need happy people for innovation and he hopes we can create a Happy World!