A chat with Mario Avila
Ambassador Spotlight
Hello Commodores!
I hope the preparation for your approaching finals or presentations are going well. Not long before the Christmas break, which will be well deserved for all of us!
I recently had a very interesting chat with Mario Avila, the Director of Turner Family Centre, which is a great association within Vanderbilt looking at promoting social innovation and entrepreneurship. Our conversation revolved around whether I could be an entrepreneur or not. I believed (past tense) that I could not be an entrepreneur because I don’t have a creative enough brain to come up with a great idea by myself. I thought I was more suited to taking someone’s idea and making it better.
Mario then started asking me about innovation and what I considered innovation. While answering the question I realized that I personally considered innovation to only be revolutionary changes in the society. Something that was so dramatic and noticeable that the entire world would be talking about it, for e.g. Tesla/Apple etc. Mario started talking about the concept of frugal innovation or “jugaad” as we call it in Hindi, which basically means to tweak something in our daily lives to make it suit us. For example, anyone who has put a cloth or newspaper below the leg of a wobbly table to make it stable is as much innovation as a TESLA. The idea may not be monetizable but it is innovation none the less.
Each one of us has examples like that. Things we have done in life that no one else has done. It may have had an impact only on our lives but there was an impact! Don’t let anyone or anything allow you to think of yourself as incapable of being innovative. It is a built-in feature in humans. All we need to do is to tap into it.
Just another day and another interesting conversation at the Wond’ry. This is exactly why I love working and being here on a daily basis. You learn something new everyday. Whether it be about yourself or about someone else, its extremely informative and helpful no matter how you want your career to progress!
I hope to have similar conversations with more people, hopefully some of you will read this and come to the wondry hoping to learn and contribute in your own way and we will be here willing to help in any way we can! See you soon!
Have a great Week!
Varun Kaushal
Student Ambassador