The much anticipated second edition of the Design Public Conclave is finally underway! Aditya Dev Sood, founder and CEO of the Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS), opened with a word of welcome.
He welcome all participants to the event. He spoke about how Design Public was not a static conferencing platform, but something like a movement, attracting new participants and stakeholders over time, all invested in the question and challenge of innovation.
“Earlier this year, we held our first event in New Delhi, with the large ambition of bringing design and innovation to government. Mr. Arun Maira of the National Planning Commission and the National Innovation Council was present, along with other senior functionaries from the UIDAI and other agencies. What we learned there is that we cannot expect government to become innovative if we do not first transform other sectors of society more fully towards an innovation orientation. How do we do that? This is one of the large questions I hope we will address, if not completely answers, today.”
Mr. Maira could not attend this edition of the conclave, and so he sent a message, which Dr. Sood read out to the assembled audience:
We desperately need innovations in the design of institutions and processes that produce public value. I hope your design-innovation initiative will provide some insights into what such design innovations in institutions and processes may be and how they may be implemented. I wish your creative endeavours all the best and look forward to its outcomes.
Design Public, in his view, “is a forum for the articulation of common projects that can be realised together to build India’s Innovation Future.” No single organization or institution is completely capable of answering the large question of what kind of Innovation Future India can have. Dr. Sood said that this was why he had built “this coalition of stakeholders from different arms of society, who look at innovation in different ways, and who seek to bring its benefits to different sections of society.”