In Telangana, a new initiative to foster creativity from the ground up Premium

Telangana State Innovation Cell hosted ‘T-Innovation Mahotsavam’ to mark World Creativity and Innovation Day, with the theme #stepoutandinnovate in gram panchayats across the State with support from the Panchayat Raj department.

After providing a platform to enthusiastic entrepreneurs through initiatives such as T-Hub and WE-Hub, the State Government has resolved to take the culture of innovation to the grassroots.

The focus of the initiative is to bring out creativity and channelise it towards innovation to help solve problems. The government is of the belief that creativity is a resource that can lead to many innovations and solve problems faced at the local level with minimum intervention.

Telangana State Innovation Cell (TSIC), the nodal agency for fostering a culture of innovation, hosted ‘T-Innovation Mahotsavam’ on April 21, to mark World Creativity and Innovation Day, with the theme #stepoutandinnovate in gram panchayats across the State with support from the Panchayat Raj department. An ‘Hour of Innovation’ — a webinar featuring students from different colleges — was conducted on the occasion to introduce students to design thinking.

As part of the T-Innovation Mahotsavam, teams of TSIC visited villages and conducted the hour for innovation wherein people were sensitised to the importance of innovators who broke stereotypes to find solutions to local problems. In the process, they were given the opportunity to identify problem statements, and steps were taken to enable them to come up with solutions on the spot. The teams took note of existing solutions to pertinent problems, besides recording concerns raised by the people.

Problems common among various villages across the 33 districts would be identified, and further scrutinised by the TSIC teams. This would be followed by mapping of the existing innovations or they would come up with new ones.

According to State chief innovation officer Shanta Thoutam, the ‘Hour of Innovation’ is one of its kind initiative by the TSIC to kindle the latent creativity in people at the grassroots and develop solutions. The programme envisages educating people at the grassroots about the progressive ecosystem in the State. In the process, the TSIC scouted for many innovations through its flagship programmes and these individuals came up with frugal solutions to address challenges at their level.

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