 I hope our previous speaker probably woke you up after lunch. It's very difficult to stay awake past lunch. I have that all the time. Okay, my name is Burli. I'm with Manipal Global Education, and each of our panelists here will introduce themselves. This session is about a very critical subject topic and practically every discipline. This is the interface between academia and industry. This sort of an issue probably did not exist 200 years ago, maybe even 100 years ago, when in practices like design or any other practice, any other craft, the way you got in was you apprenticed yourself with a master, learned on the job, and then became proficient and productive. Somewhere along the way, the Industrial Revolution happened, and then the technologies and the knowledge required became very complex, and so there was the need to have a separate school set up to learn the craft before you could be prepared to actually start producing. In India, we have another problem. The Industrial Revolution didn't begin in India. In other countries where the Industrial Revolution began, those who actually tinkered around in design actually produced the Wright brothers. They were bicycle mechanics, they built airplanes, and so with Daimler-Benz, for instance, they tinkered around with engines and built cars. That didn't happen. The Industrial Revolution was helicoptered into India. We started initially importing products, and after that we started building products to specs that were developed elsewhere. The last couple of decades, industry in India has become more and more sensitive to developing design sensibilities, and lots of design schools have come up. Nevertheless, there appears to be a disconnect between academia and industry, or real or perceived, and that's what the discussion here is going to be about, and how we can bridge that disconnect between the two. We will start with our first panelist. You have a phone here. Please introduce yourself and present your views. Also, your name, your affiliation, and whether you're going to present the academic perspective or the industry perspective? Yeah. Hi. I'm Sameer from Use Designs. From, of course, the industry perspective. Couple of thoughts I have. One of the major things with academia that I have seen in India, and I have not been to a design school in India, but in the US, that the practicality aspect is missing. How to practically do user experience design or any design work, that aspect is missing completely. I mean, I have seen now people coming up for internships for three months, six months, and learning from the industry, but people who have even master's degrees in design probably don't even know how to do user research. How to, what are the fundamentals of research? How to do sampling? You know, those things. Simple things, right? That we would expect at least from a master student. But they know the entire process very well, thoroughly, and they have been taught to, you know, kind of take that process ahead. You know, blue sky thinking, do research. But industry doesn't work that way. Everyone knows that research is pretty expensive, and it really depends on the time and budget the project and client has. You cannot always go to 30 users and 40 users, but you can do some discounted usability or testing or some kind of research. So I think the practicality aspect is missing from the academia, is my viewpoint. Okay, can you speak to how you think it might be, one might approach addressing it? Just take a minute, no more than that. Yeah, absolutely. I think academicians can add a lot of value to the industry, the way you see in other maybe European countries, that a lot of cutting edge research actually happens in the academic world, in universities, with the help of the industry. I think if we can set up that kind of platform, because in academics they would have the resources, the student resources at least, and industry has other kinds of resources. But when industry in their own world, they keep on doing things and projects, hardly get extra resources from the management to work on something that is cutting edge and extra. So I think if that fusion happens between industry and academia, to progressively do some kind of research in the experience or design field, that could be consumed then by the industry. That would be one of the things that I would suggest. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Hello, good afternoon. I'm Naveen Bhagalkott from 60th School of Art, Design and Technology. And as the name suggests, I represent academia. The hard word to pronounce academia, tongue to stir, especially after lunch. Anyway, I kind of continue with what he stopped at. So yes, cutting edge research. And I agree that that's where we need to collaborate. And so my position is that there are two ways that academia could actually contribute to industry in India, design academia, to design industry, and any industry that is involved in services and products. One is, of course, that academia could offer very rich human resources as trained professionals. And we are not doing a good job of it. That's a point well taken. I've been here for the past two years in the space of academia. And I agree that we are not really doing a very good job of it. The second question that we could actually contribute is to cutting edge research. In my very brief experience of industry, I left the industry and ran away from industry within 10 months, is that it's very hard for industry to look beyond the next year, at least at the design level. It happens at the very top level if it happens. There are hardly any industry that I know that will look five years down the lane in a very serious way, not just a marketing campaign. But academia does that. I work in the profession of HCI in interaction design, and we have been publishing. And for the past two years, my lab in SISTI, we have been focusing on a definite problem space called as home health care. And how do you enhance that? And looking at self-monitoring technologies. And we have created enough interesting knowledge that I think would be very helpful for industry when they're not looking for this immediate product line, but how will health care happen in five years down the lane? Or four years, five years down the lane? So that I think is very interesting, and I would be very happy to work with the industry at that level. Thank you. Hello. Hello. Okay. So I'm Keur. I come from IIT, Guwahati. And as the name indicates, I would represent academia side of the story. So I'm a bit positive about the industry-academia relationship based on the experience what we have. So there has been a lot of talk about the industry-academia relationship in various conferences, and I've been panelist on those as well. So I'll not be talking about what kind of problems exist, but let's take a step ahead. Oh, okay. This is sort of, yeah, anyway. So let's take a step ahead about what can be done next. So let me just cite one example of what we are doing, and maybe that will add a good overview about the problems that both sides are facing. So we have just started a project with Nokia. Okay. Yeah, so, yeah, I think now this is fine. So, yeah, just again, I'm Keur from IIT, Guwahati, whoever didn't know. But so I was talking about, let's take a step ahead about industry-academia relationship. So I was citing an example of the recent collaboration that we have done with Nokia. Interestingly, the collaboration was, collaboration happened for the first time in India with Nokia Global Painting Department. And then we asked about that how come the first, this is the first time it's happening in India. So they said that academia is very rigid in terms of giving IPs and other logistics to the industry. However, the same situation happens much better in China because they have much better collaborations with universities and professors around them. So that's one side of the story when it comes to industry problems with respect to IT and other logistics. At least I can talk about the IITs and all. The grass is not greener on the other side as well. As a professor, I would certainly want, I have joined as a professor to have much more knowledge than what perhaps industry could give it to me in terms of research, in terms of activities related to HCI, wearable computing and so on. Perhaps that approach when industry would look from an academia and look from a collaboration in terms of co-publishing the papers, publishing patents together rather than just having a complete IP-based, you know, IP-based collaboration, is that publication research knowledge and that approach has been taken then perhaps both sides would really take the discussion much ahead. But somehow we have been doing very good collaborations with the industry considering all the big research labs in the country and the world. So I'm very positive about the kind of research collaborations what we are having right now. And it's been working out with us with Microsoft, IBM and other research labs, publishing joint papers in ACM and IEEE as well as publishing patents as well. So somehow I represent the better side of the collaborations that we have. Can we move on and then we'll come back to you. My name is Dominique, you probably noticed I don't look like a localite. I'm actually imported from abroad and I enjoy my stay here in India now for three years and I am in a bit delicate situation because I consider myself neither academia or industry now because I have the feet in both parts. I've started actually to take the role director of the ISD school within the DSK group in Pune since last June and I think the reasons why actually I would have a positive opinion about industry and education collaboration is because actually the ISD is a school that has built up since 1987 a very specific relationship with the industry as we are actually not having any academics in our university teaching. So you need just to know that I'm talking about 1987 because it's a school that's been found in France and which has been creating a collaboration with the DSK group in Pune and I would say that actually I don't see a gap between the industry and the academia. If I look at the experience I have made before joining ISD and after joining ISD I fully agree though that there are a lot of areas where we have to work together and probably what we are trying to assess and what is the area where we have to work the most on is actually that instead of talking we have to do. So basically I think that the gap the industry might actually feel and I fully agree with that is that many students understand the process but if they don't have a process to follow they are lost. So basically when I'm saying that what we would like to develop and what we are developing since 1987 is actually a policy where students learn how to make and learn to offer solutions. So I think that I would give the microphone to somebody else because otherwise we are running out of time but basically thank you. My name is Atul Manohar and I manage the UX team at Informatica India. The first time when I read this the title itself, Industry Plus Academia Fusion a very funny incident came to my mind. A couple of years back there was a movie I don't know how many of you would have watched this Hollywood movie. So this particular thing is Aliens versus Predators. And interestingly at the end of the movie obviously aliens and predators fight, they die and only the humans kind of survive. I'm sorry for diverging but interestingly are we really talking about huge creatures called industry and academia, some kind of monsters? Actually no. We are talking about needs of people needs of human beings because I remember I was a student, I was a aspiring job-seekant I'm a beginner also I have been a bit of a manager I love going and teaching. So actually somebody like Dominique would have probably worked all the four hats about today, right? So interestingly just saying that what industry wants and what academia wants how about talking about what students want from their life, you know from their life, do they want money are they ready to work for money or are they inspired more from something else? I remember I was running a small startup in Pune 10 years back and almost every year I used to have two students come to me work with me practically without pay so they were ready to work for me without pay because they knew that they'll learn so is that attitude still there in the students? Have we really seen that attitude? I don't know I'm not saying today's students are good, bad if somebody is working for money that's a good thing I consider that to be a very good thing so if somebody comes and says okay you are offering a job, what kind of salary are you offering? I don't take that as an offence I like that because people should work for money nothing wrong in that but I think we should just try and understand the people's perspective what teachers want are the teachers interested in coming over to the industry and probably working for a month are the employees interested in going to the institute and maybe teaching for about a month or six months and I think much easier we'll be able to understand each other's perspectives Hi, my name is Satish Patil and I'm from Tata Alexi I take care of UX and research group at Tata Alexi I always wonder about when we talk of industry and academia these two things one is speed and second is inertia or acceleration of change so for example industry need particularly if you're talking of UX as a domain have been changing pretty rapidly the kind of technologies that are getting deployed in the product is having massive impact on manifestation of US and if you look at academic institutes it's more about inertia it's more about history of academics and as they say knowledge is permanent so it's about at some instance if I can say difference in inertia between the rate at which industry forges ahead and the way academics says if I can put it try and map the industry needs so maybe it's worthwhile to ponder on how do you bridge these gaps my name is Priyanka I come from Symbiosis Institute of Design and of course I represent academia for now and my take on all that has been said would be largely to agree with most of the people who say that there needs to be more collaboration between academia and industry at proper place and time at the same time I think there is no dearth of collaboration when it comes to UX because the field itself is the name itself is less than 19 years old and so there are neither enough practitioner in industry or in academia for the subject so and most of the at least a lot of private schools function in collaboration with industry so a lot of collaboration does happen however I would agree to one of the I mean another panelist who had said it before was that not only we have to be resource providers and we can work on excelling at that as well it's not that we are doing excellent job at that and there is a long way to go there as well but at the same time we need to collaborate way more for knowledge creation so some institutes would have collaboration with industry, some institutes do not have I think I would like to use this platform to say that most all industries should collaborate with as many institutes, educational institutes as possible and lastly since the topic of this I think the forum the conference was also a focus on customer experience I think that is sort of a natural progression for for user experience so I think and there are no institutes offering any kind of knowledge on that at least in India so we may like to collaborate and design a new course also because in industry there is a huge dearth of courses or knowledge related to academia thank you after this first initial expression of your sentiments on this issue let me throw out one thing what is one practical move either from industry or academia that you can suggest that can bring any gap what could bridge that, what is one very specific, very practical move it could be an initiative, it could be an activity it could be whatever any of you could pick up, yes go ahead first if I can put it this way a very structured periodic review maybe it is a bi-yearly once in a three year academic curriculum to see how best do they map industry needs very good, yes let me just add a bit to that I think education is kind of all about experiencing and if at all just a crazy kind of a proposal wherein if I get to yesterday there was a very interesting talk, it was about empathy so if at all I can instead of talking about the students come on they don't do this, they don't do this the teachers don't know how to teach instead of that a professional comes up I am ready to take six days of training as a student in your institute or I may volunteer to come over and if at all you think I am worth it I volunteer to teach for one week and vice versa the students also come over and try and experience the kind of work environment that we are living in to your point actually on the roadmap for five years very few companies have the luxury to think we are all around the quarter unfortunately so we are all running between the quarters though theoretically there is a roadmap for ten years, five years and so on but still we have to kind of match that run rate of the quarter and end our quarter rightly so instead of planning for five years how about experiencing small bits of each other's life I think that will make our life much easier you wanted to say something and then you can go in one word that would be co-knowledge creation this could be in form of taking combined courses together or having sponsored research projects and it will also help in terms of getting good students from a hiring perspective but mainly from a perspective of co-knowledge creation I would really want to put in that after that Dominic I would continue on similar lines I will be a bit more idealistic my wet dream for an industry academia fusion is a lab that already exists in Sweden it is called as mobile life if you have not heard of it it is a lab that is actually managed by the Stockholm University but it is an autonomous lab funded by the government of Sweden and also by corporations like Ericsson, IKEA and other Scandinavian companies and what they do is research concepts that most likely and also a lot of knowledge about human behaviors with technology and a lot of it actually would come in the next two to three years so they are targeting the big things about the next four or five years down the lane but the way the lab works is people from industry go and work there the professors from Stockholm University work there, the students work there and working on a very particular problem so that is this calls again for a challenge for the Indian industry and this I am not really sure that we can address this can the Indian industry come out of their IP protection and invest in a lab where open innovation happens and nobody is really sure of where that knowledge will go this is an open question Dominic Well I would say that at the end it's all about money in a sense that to a certain extent maybe one of the gaps that you have between the industry and the educational system is that actually the industry feels the gap because they actually don't pay for the service between brackets so let me explain you what I mean at the moment what is happening in many countries is that you have a shift from public education to private education which even though I represent private education is actually something that is a big challenge at the end the industry is our client if you look at it on the broad perspective so the industry is already doing some efforts actually we hope that they will do more efforts but actually the trend in the industry is definitely the fact that they come to see institutions because they have noticed that there are some issues with performance and with capability of the students that come on the market and they tell us ok we would like to invest mine hours or we would like to invest project time or we would like to invest even financially into your group because we have recognized and I think this is very positive actually so I think that the gap is actually reduced progressively because we have recognized actually that what we get from you might not necessarily be what we need but as I said before we are actually working on policies that help students to become makers but there is still a gap because obviously to have a good result you need real collaboration but ultimately I think that if the industry really wants academia to correspond what they want we have to question if it is really the fact that the industry one has to define what the students will be of course the students have to be performant the students have actually to answer questions have to be able to get the return on investment that their salary means to the company but if we have a collaboration maybe we are going to be able to create something that is in the middle because on one side academia says we do what we think is ok the industry says no you don't we recreate unemployable people and we have to start everything from zero but I think is actually that if the academia and the industry work together then they will be able to to form and I don't like to use the word form because basically it means that we are putting people in molds and we definitely shouldn't do that that we can help I would use the word groom maybe that's better in the context people who are actually understanding what we want but they understand as well but we understand as well what they are so that would be my first point but ultimately what I think has to happen as governments tend worldwide to consider education as something useless because then people become more stupid and they control people better at the end what happens is that the private institutions would need support from the industry and I would even say industry has to finance private institutions educational institutions generally 100% because they are the ultimately beneficiaries of that and that is my point because basically if the industry would finance education 100% because the government doesn't do anything anyway then we would be able to create a kind of ecosystem that actually would be beneficiary for the whole society we will come back to that Samir you want to thank you just one practical thing right I suggest an exchange program managers from industry going and teaching for three months and the professors coming and managing projects so Samir that was really wonderful so as a baby step in that what we did a few months back was we had a research project where in IIT Bombay IDC student and his guide was actually working with a couple of guys from my team to work on a kind of research come project so there are certain challenges we have seen on the industry side it is very difficult because for our kind of a domain is slightly complex to understand and for a newcomer it becomes almost 2 up to 3 months of job to immerse into that and stuff like that but that's okay on the other side on the institute side they had a very fixed structure in which their projects could fit in work as internships because that institute didn't have 6 months of internship so they had something called projects sponsored projects so we kind of converted that sponsored project into really a research project which was internally treated as an internship so you know what I am saying so these three adjustments are very much possible across so I can just call my HR and say by the way he is an intern coming with me for 6 months and in reality research for the institute we are doing actually a kind of a sponsored project so it's just there are the channels I believe are very much there just the matter of the willingness and coming forward one step and saying okay I have got a research project are you game coming forward on the part of industry or academia coming forward on both the sides because from the industry side frankly offering an internship project for about 6 months is trust me a lot of investment so I have got only 10 people team and one of my guys will be guiding this person for 6 months a lot of babysitting over there and a lot of investment so that's a kind of commitment from the industry as well as academia should kind of trust me saying that okay he will learn actually in the industry so that's a kind of trust I believe I am talking about I will just did you have one last thing to say okay we will do after that I will just see a couple of questions then we will open up questions to the audience so if you can just be brief did you have something to say I realized that I just have one point so we have been doing this so professors from our institute they actually go on sabbatical at various research organizations and they work for a year or so and similarly researchers from the organization they come to the institute and then work for a long time so that exists okay we are saying so one issue is on the one hand we see that it's already happening and in some other places so is one issue seems to be that information doesn't seem to flow easily around there are some information barriers that seem to exist so maybe there needs to be more coordination within academia and industry so that these opportunities these experiments that have been conducted elsewhere are known across okay go ahead Dominic so actually I think that I see a gap because you talked about the industrial revolution and this hasn't happened here obviously and you've talked about helicoptering technology into the country so India is not the only country where this happened it happened in many other places at different decades you have China you have Japan, Korea and actually one gap that you could notice and that can be the origin of this debate is actually that design education is focusing and design the understanding of design is focusing primarily on the IT industry I don't know how many people here represent the manufacturing industry but basically the gap is that the approach of designing for the IT industry and the approach for designing for manufacturing is a totally different thing and there I think that actually the frustration of the industry can come because basically designing for the IT industry is something that is less challenging and don't understand me wrong than designing for the manufacturing industry for one very simple reason the IT industry design principle is trial and error and if you make a wrong code it's not a problem you'd write a new one if you are designing for the industry and you are designing for the manufacturing industry trial and error doesn't work because otherwise maybe the brakes on your car don't work or the airplane falls down so actually I would say that the biggest challenge maybe that we could consider is that as the industry, the manufacturing industry in India is still relatively young the educational institutes haven't maybe enough, haven't got maybe not enough experience to actually work with the manufacturing environment and there actually I would say that we need to insist more on one side the readiness of the manufacturing industry to heavily invest into education because you cannot learn craftsmanship that is something well you cannot teach craftsmanship in the sense that it is not a process it is actually a maturing process so I would suggest as well that eventually in the future we try to understand how we can get these energies together in order to to close this gap Interestingly on your point frankly I am seeing a lot of positive synergy already on a personal basis I have experienced most of the institutes personally coming to me or people around here saying that would you like to be on a panel of maybe the external examiner or would you like to come over and probably take up workshop in our industry institute and I believe most of the institutes have a designated person I don't know what is the designation but these guys are actually doing a great job I mean I personally have been contacted at least by 3 to 4 institutes which is a good sign yeah I will just reiterate what some of the panel members already said so when it comes to placement or when it comes to internships we have absolutely no dearth of industries approaching us and we have an overflow we have to say no and you know we are at a fix how many what do we do with so much of requirements however when it comes to knowledge creation I don't see many volunteers by knowledge creation do you mean research by research or yes projects which would create in the in the end create some sort of knowledge it could be a life project it could be a hypothetical project so this is not forthcoming from industry is that what you are saying yes yes sorry go ahead no that's fine it's a valid point and I thought I would just bring out here to the institute loving represents in fact we did some similar initiatives in our discussions with their faculty member it came out that they were striving they were dying for you know giving industry related problems to their student so that you know they can get better say relevant education imparted to it and in some sense we work together with them to literally try and define their assignments their project and you know try and have as good as a dry run of what they would practice in the industry so it's it's no more about academic projects or hypothetical projects that they are dealing with in their curriculum so last and then we will we will have we will come back later anyway so to your point of information exchange that really depends on I think the culture of that institute whether it's an IIT or a private institute because I can vouch for IIT Guwahati we have not met but people from IIT Guwahati come all the way work with us for 6 months and we are also writing papers with them we have just written 2 papers right now so it really depends on the culture this seems to be one progressive institute there are couple in Mumbai that I can vouch for they have started business design courses back in 2003 and they come and they you know involve industry so culture is again an important aspect alright so let me throw on something Dominic made an interesting observation whether there's a perception or there's data for it I don't know but it's interesting nevertheless that much of design is focused on the IIT industry now let's assume this is indeed correct the fact is the IIT industry exploded in the last 20 years and most of the customers were overseas and they were demanding and it's possible that the need for design was emphasized there because the Indian Indian market had gotten used to accepting whatever the industry gave them because you had no choice there was no competition so people were resigned to getting whereas the market overseas there were free markets and hence the IIT industry especially needed design sensibilities now of course we have a new generation coming up a lot of young people here who demand a good design and perhaps there will be a shift in the local market and therefore it will not be just IIT but other areas what I'd like to ask of you is some years ago we heard whether or not they actually did it or not in China they started 100 design schools I mean everybody got was talking about it now we don't we haven't seen an iPhone coming out of China yet even though they've set up so many design institutions well they come but we know where they come from we know we're talking about design here now can we can India hope to set up and produce world class design and if so what does it take what kind of collaboration between academia and industry would it take to make that happen to say India is where you come to for design you want to start he'll start and then Dominic that's a great one interestingly to the best of my knowledge quite a few institutes are at this moment still struggling for number of teachers I could be wrong I'm sorry so that's precisely where if at all we have right now about 10 design schools in India and all the 10 design schools probably are still looking for good teachers around if I'm not wrong if at all there are about 2000 more schools in India design schools would there be enough teachers probably no there are two reasons let's face it is it something to do with the kind of returns the teachers get versus the professionals probably but that's relatively fixable actually do people really want to go and teach is where industry could actually contribute so if at all there is a kind of a model wherein there is one institute which has only 10 fixed teachers I don't know whether it exists and their real need of the number of teachers is 30 say and they have 10 on their payroll and the rest of the 20 are actually coming out of industries 20 industries lined up who are contributing one one week each or something like that and trust me one week in my kind of an industry is an expensive affair they're actually running between the two quarters and you know what I mean saying right so I'm investing one week of one of the resources of mine means a lot of investment but actually industry would probably come forward and do that very good Dominic yeah I would agree with you actually but we face exactly the problem so we hire people actually at the moment because we face exactly the same difficulty we face even one more difficulty because we actually want to hire industry professionalists and not academia so we don't discriminate academia but basically this is the policy of our institute but to go back to the to what you said indeed it is a heavy investment for the industry to send someone to participate in academics in fact that there is no justifiable return on investment and this is our biggest challenge actually because when I meet the industry partners that we're working with they are ready to provide us man hours but their question is what is going to be my return and that is something that is actually very difficult to answer but one of the answers can be basically that the return is somebody who is directly employable to provide attitude at work and who will actually be able to understand how the industry works because I think that actually even if you have a very good designer a very good designer who has not been involved in industry doesn't understand how the industry works and we have had presentations today about actually how the design awareness of the design maturity is evolving in companies and I see that there you have a big gap as well the other thing I would like to say answering talking about the fact that we might not have enough teachers if we have more design schools it is obviously going to be the case but to solve that there is probably a much bigger step to be done before which starts actually before the education that is taking care of design education I think that to a certain extent society would need to to change what challenges we face is actually that anything that is related to design or anything that is related to innovation requires people to have learned actually to think differently so we are getting to a problem that is probably much much deeper because basically the educational system that is prior to design or whatever education is a system that doesn't encourage creativity but encourages only data absorption and actually we have as educational institutes a double challenge first of all we need of course to understand what the industry wants and we are working on that but on the other hand we need to help the students that come to our institutions to actually get out of the scheme that have been going through for 12 or 15 or 20 years where they were told you learn this book by heart and you recite it perfectly and you get 10 things where they would need to be helped to understand read the book and analyze it and then tell us your thoughts and what you would do differently based on that I somehow feel that we are trying to catch up with China or play catch up I was reading a tweet today and somebody was tweeting that while we are still talking about at the prime minister level talking about China is already talking about design in China so one thing I think it's a false or it's not a really fruitful game to play catch up with China because of the numbers I mean I don't think so we should be really focusing on opening up 20,000 or whatever number of design schools in India because we have a problem of quality first we should address that and that comes back to Dominic's point and I agree that but also I really think that it's very hard for design schools to address this problem of lack of creative thinking it's much more core it's not at a skill level but it's a level of thinking that a child has developed already because of the schooling system if at all we need to change and produce a lot of good high quality designers then we need to address all systems so we have to start from the root anybody else any other thoughts on this yes I mean there is a dearth of professors there is also a dearth of designers so it's a game of supply and demand and the demand is always going to be driven through industry so that's my point number one the point number two is I think you asked about good design from India right it's possible and it is being done already just that the information flow is such that people don't know about it and quality is a big issue I think it's to make a statement it's probably in the culture of the chalta hai things name one global product by any 5 billion plus dollar Indian company zero it's that culture that's the problem very quick because we need to go to the I think it's an open thing anyway I just realized that when he's talking about the industry drives the demand I just felt that we really are narrowing it down because I just remember that hey there are a lot of social entrepreneurs coming up there are a lot of startup companies coming up which really don't think themselves as industries there are more enterprises, more corporations maybe and this is very speculative maybe we should also start thinking about them and what role design plays if at all in these organizations but maybe this is a side stepping I think I would like to add to this thing because I think there is also the topic which you have not touched is that many in industry believe that catering to industry requirements is sort of the end and final intent of the institute which a lot of academicians believe is not it could be creating new knowledge it could be creating new design entrepreneurs it is not only resource providing so I think a lot of mismatch happens there also when the benchmark seems to be whether you are fitting into the industry standards or you're good enough or not a lot of academicians would believe that the benchmarks are different very good I mean it's all a debate between training and education are we just a trade school that train people or do we generate knowledge we can come back but we want to give an opportunity to the audience if any of you have any issues you want to raise or any question please do so if there is none we can always come back and add stuff if you would like to address it to anybody you can do that or to a specific person you can do that too you can number them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 so remember the names so thank you UX India for giving the industry an interface to the academics I have an ask from the academics out here so I lead a team of about 20, 25 people and I have actually kept my team a little non-designer centric so I really encourage people from all kinds of backgrounds you know to come and work with us as UX designers because I think it's all about problem solving and if people genuinely want to solve problems it doesn't matter if they have a design background or not however what would truly help is the academician can convert some sort of short term courses that help people think in a structured way I think there's a big gap there because we have just one or two institutes providing those kinds of short term certificate courses anymore so this is an ask for me so is it the case that our design institutions are being focused on regular degree or diploma courses rather than short term and that is where the opportunity is is that the case a microphone we need a there right there okay did you you were saying she was can you just finish her sentence and then you can yes go ahead so I think yeah so we have actually been thinking on these lines because we have been getting such requests from a lot of people in industry because there is like I said a huge dearth of courses and trainings especially coming from in educational institutes so I agree that that is a long felt need and it's high time that we sort of fill it and in fact most institutes would agree to that great thanks Dominic to briefly answer I would like to separate two things a brief course or a workshop is definitely something that is obviously required by the industry and is something that is very useful but we should not forget that actually like any discipline that you learn in life one part that really helps you to understand what you're doing is time because that makes you more mature so I think that on one side you can have a dream and the market is requiring for that to have a quick learning process how to become more structured about or how become a designer but to a certain extent structure in thinking is not only pre-process related but it's a growing process as well so we have to be very prudent about trying to reduce the length of the apprenticeship because actually it is as well time that helps you to mature thank you try to keep it brief and we can have a bunch of questions so in that context I would want to reiterate the point that we mentioned about the number of faculties we have in the institutes so already we have courses on bachelors PhD and postdoctoral research so the faculties are already so tied up that they perhaps are unable to float that so that's a pretty logistics that at least the IITs are facing that's an excuse you're not solving that problem but I'm giving you the real picture I'm giving you the real picture yeah but why should they care they have a need anybody else I've been in academia anybody else any other questions keep your question brief and please keep your responses brief too somebody in the back mind if I'll continue on this 30 seconds please I mean it was really interesting to hear out one ask one challenge I've seen historically in the last few years is if maybe IIT Bombay comes up with something it becomes IIT Bombay owned stuff if Informatica steps in and says okay I want 20 designers to work with me it becomes Informatica owned stuff but where is Kaladhar so interestingly is a great opportunity for US India to stand up and say we provide a platform wherein it's an auction it's an eBay for research for that matter so industries can say that okay I've got a research project wherein I'll be needing two students one teacher working with us for about four weeks this is the brief if you're interested guys please raise your hands and on the portal some of the institutes will probably bid for it I don't know I'm just stretching it too far but actually that's a great platform on which people could actually it's a demand and supplier rightly said so if at all I have a demand of such a project I'll post my demand if there is a taker they'll pick it up and say that okay it matches my requirements I bet by next year some young person here would have said that up great start-up idea give me some stakes in the company great person at the back hello you have a mic close by okay we'll ask the person who has a mic and then by the time we'll get a mic to you whoever has a mic please ask your question yes hello as a senior as a senior design professional I would like to know as per the industry going on I mean it's a rapidly changing as per the emerging technologies currently so is it as per the academic the courses that is syllabus is going on currently that as per industry standards or industry oriented if the syllabus is changed or something if it is profitable or something like in industry I mean in the companies they are something like mentoring kind of something like programs or events if it is that will be more profitable or advantageous which one will be you guys think or throw some light that will be very advantageous anybody I didn't get the question can you state the question in ten words simple form I mean to say which one will be more profitable for the person who is entering into the design industry so what kind of workshop would be more useful for the trainee person seeking I mean to say those who are in the industry those are something like if the technology is improving and new technology is coming so those who are already worked in some of the couple of standards or couple of skill set so that will be more profitable if the industry has mentors or something like initiate some programs that will be more profitable for the design professionals that will be advantageous for them so you are giving a suggestion taken thank you next person yes I think somebody said a lot of us in industry focus on a quarters right and we have we have plans for five years and ten years which we hardly are on papers right why don't you pass on your plans that are on papers to the academia that academia be ahead of the industry because what we are looking at is is that something that can be done give your ten year plans my three year old daughter learns to play a mobile game much faster than me can't the academia be advance than the industry anybody yes go ahead I agree yes go ahead no no Mike quick very brief it is okay all of you agree just raise your hands and we will skip okay no I will bring the third dimension here and I think government is doing a lot to that effect it's not about industry and academia for that matter for example in this prime minister's technical committee they appointed Ram Durai and there are senior industry professional helping government if I can put this constitutional as some of these policies towards education including design education any other response actually at the top level we are talking about the policies let me try and delve into the person going back to my story of aliens so at the human beings level when a student comes to the industry what are the lacuna's industry finds it actually there is a I don't have any complaints frankly from the students who are working who have worked with me traditionally and industry poses a lot of challenges a lot of constraints we design project and while a designer is actually in the student hood he doesn't have any constraints and that's the way it should be so I'm not imposing that all the institute should jump in and say that they please work like industry you have these three constraints you have budget constraints and stuff it shouldn't be that way so it should be very different and industry should kind of accept that students coming out of the institute are not going to be kind of fully professional at such which is perfectly fine three months they'll pick it up okay very good any other response okay next okay this lady right yeah just grab the okay okay he's a mic dude okay he who has the mic okay so my question is so when I was a student when I was a student I had the same concern which I have now when I'm a professional as a design professional the question is when I was a student I did an internship and I was not allowed to present this content anywhere else IP thing now when I am in a service industry I cannot recruit any intern because I work for some other clients IP thing what do I do so is this the issue of law is it a issue of practice what is it yes and this is what I meant when I threw this challenge to the industry that I believe I honestly believe that there is a space that comes very early before a product comes into its life and its conception where industry and academia and all other stakeholders can work in an open lab open innovation space and I think we need to work towards that and that's the only way I think that we could solve the IP problems that we all all human beings as it talks about so how would you make this happen let's say what is one thing that needs to be done I mean does it go to it yes taking from my own experience I have been working with our lab in this space out of clinic healthcare I am sure there are many industries here who are working what do you do here is a step to be taken by let's have a meet let's discuss what are the big problems that you are facing and let's set it up give me two resources I will give you three resources let's work on can UX India be the forum where that begins sure very good can we have this lady yes to start with I have a question on this panel there is no student at the end of the day you are talking about students you are talking about how they should be reacting in this situation very good so you have a question I hope yeah I have this is just to start with this is just to start with so the next point I want to make here in terms of the conversations that we have been having between the industry and academia there is one more person that is the alumni how many of these institutes actually engage alumni to create some sort of mentorship so that in that way you are not being only a money minded industry and you are not being only an academy oriented institute but you also have somebody in between who is more emotional about the institute and teaching somebody that would be one more thing now my question here is don't you think the education system in a design school needs to be different from a management school or law school and a medical school so it's actually not because when we are given assignments and we are giving say internships the structure is so formed it's so stringent that when you go out to the industry and you want to learn something new you don't because you've been told XYZ is real anything beyond that is probably not a part of your curriculum so I think that sort of openness is not there in the design institutes and I'm saying this on this a big question now now whether this perception matches with the reality or is this a perception is that real what needs to be done go ahead so regarding the alumni part so again no let's focus on the yes because I think that's the yeah well maybe you are in the wrong school but that's my first comment second comment is actually we've just heard from the industry that they need to learn how to think structurally if I remember well so maybe the issue you're talking about is because of the fact that structural thinking in the environment you're confronted to is not being applied to the right area so that is what I would like to answer because basically it is obvious and that students are asked to be creative to think differently but on the other hand if they want to be heard, listened and efficient in the industry they have to learn how the industry works in order for them to be adopted by the industry and we had actually a presentation about this so I would say that it is a very subtle balance between being crazy and between being boring so maybe you need to go to another institute anybody has a more practical suggestion I would like to take an opportunity over here with this question what we both are trying to mention me and Navin regarding the co-creation co-knowledge part of it so if industry comes together and a research lab is set up in the academic institution perhaps the point what you're trying to make regarding the kind of freedom of work and the creativity that you can have while working is much more possible because we both have been doing in our labs and it's really working out in terms of adding up industry perspective as well as academic and research perspective both by the way with closing after this anybody has any last words not just speaking to this or anything else regarding the academia industry interface very briefly do you have any words to share anything you wanted to say you can say it now you want to go ahead yeah last comments taking from this point is we would actually want and look forward to design leaders in academia especially in India which I don't see right now thank you I agree and and I don't think I think to expect similar things from the industry would be not the right comment but what I would say rather than saying anything about the industry what we expect what I would say right now on the table put on the table that SISTY and SISTY Labs is open for any sort of discussion and collaboration and taking these discussions concretely forward it could be one week that you people come and teach here do a workshop with us or we do something or we do research or we think about FIEST on the line that's a very concrete way we could discuss any industry here great let's do it yes I'm shocked actually we need to keep a balance okay I've seen a lot of such discussions bubble up and create a huge kind of a balloon but very few of these discussions end into completely positive thoughts that I carry so individually everybody sitting in this room if at all could just close your eyes and say if I am representing industry okay what I have to offer to the academia and vice versa I think then we have it okay I think everybody is agreeing on that aspect so I don't really want to add to it I would rather respond to one of the student who felt so violated about not being part of debate on the fact that why is it that teachers or processes are not allowing them to freely you know freely think, educate and experiment slightly different perspective coming from the industry side you know many we discussed it offline many times the experience is students as they come out of industry are extremely opinionated we discussed of students being molded versus moldable clay I would rather have students you know mutually within the academia and students not having them come out extremely opinionated so that they are far susceptible you know for better equipped to grasp what industry has to offer initially drinker you get the final word okay I will only summarize whatever in short whatever I think the intent of this panel has been I think both industry and academia need to understand each other's point of view and work for a third cause and not just for each other which could be you know knowledge creation or better or projects for society I think both sides could come together thank you very much I hope you've got there was some you know seeds planted from this discussion and please carry on the discussions with these folks beyond this beyond this session beyond today with everybody around and hopefully when we meet again next year we have solved all these problems