The Ignition: Change the Orbit- Part 1
The lack of skilled professionals in organisations and the resultant lacunae in expertise is because of the reluctance on the part of the professionals to change their orbit. In spite of having landed in the wrong organisation, they develop a comfort zone for themselves and then they do not want to come out of it although they may not be fully satisfied with their state. Owing to this attitude great many opportunities to excel in the area of their strengths are lost for them. Many organisations have collapsed because they didn’t try for a change in accordance with the changing technology and trends of innovations as well as people’s aspirations. Similar things also happen with individuals as well. What we learned in the college is rarely upgraded and polished and we are beaten by the advancing technology and the subsequent requirement for advancedskills. So, it is imperative that we break this ‘comfort zone’ frequently to remain relevant. The ignition to change the orbit should come from the core of the heart, which gives a boost to take risks to fulfill our ambitions. There are unlimited opportunities available if we change our orbit. This requires courage and the courage will come only by upgrading our skills and thinking innovatively.
2.1 The Way Forward – Options for Youth
It has been observed and experienced many times that most of the youth at college level demonstrate a drop in creativity and innovation as compared to the same qualities they displayed in their school life. They are bound to follow the same pattern and gradually lose touch with their creative self. The real villain is the system which is concerned about only memory tests instead of creativity and intellect. In this pattern of learning system, they grow as knowledge seekers but don’t know how to apply the knowledge for creativity and innovation. This shatters their confidence and they start developing fear when faced with competition. This turns most of the youth into job seeker trying somehow to fit into the system to sustain themselves. Their skills and dreams are put in cold storage. However, some of them still harbor their dreams and after a while venture into entrepreneurship, and eventually meet with failure due to lack of proper preparation and resources.
After completion of the education at any level, we have paths from where we can start our journey based on various interests, potential, knowledge and skills we earned. These options generally fall in one of the domains mentioned below:
• Knowledge and Skill
• Design and Innovation
• Research and Invention
• Entrepreneurship and Startup
It is very easy to have a start based on the knowledge and skills we have as we generally do not require any investment and also do not require a team. Most of the organisations can offer a job based on our knowledge and skills. Most of the time the nature of the work in the job profile is to fulfill the ORGANISATIONAL REQUIREMENT where we need to invest our time and knowledge and skills in fixed pattern to execute the task. The growth in this domain is linear.
Entrepreneurship is the association of multiple skills and multiple resources like investment and team. The product blue print and the launching pad should be prepared accordingly, keeping in mind the availability of the resources in hands. Entrepreneurs are meant to understand the MARKET GAP. It means they must understand the present problem of the society related to their product or service and be able to develop the solutions.
Research and innovation require specific skills to complete the task. The output ought to be much bigger than the knowledge domain as we are investing our time, as well as the intellect to execute the task. The people associated with the domain must be able to visualize the futuristic MARKET DEMAND. The nature of the work is to provide solution for a futuristic problem. The growth is exponential but success starts reflecting after an undefined period. The people who choose to work in this domain must have passion for the same at the core of their heart.
• Job: Applying only what they learnt can only lead to linear growth. They only earn by investing their time and knowledge.
• Higher studies: This results in subject matter expertise and incremental growth. They earn by investing their time and skills.
• Design and innovation: This requires multiple skills. There will be incremental growth at a faster rate. They earn by investing their creativity.
• Research and development: This requires futuristic vision. The result is exponential growth.
Our Academic life can be the foundation for our career organisation. Academic institutes organize projects based activities for students with a motive to develop the creativity and innovative skills among the students. If the students do these activities seriously with dedication, the chances of success will increases largely.
They may achieve many milestones while doing their academic routine tasks, like publishing research papers, developing prototype and creating new theories. All these activities help them to achieve many rewards and awards like patents and funding for their product development. These help them in gaining a strong fundamental understating of the market and further lead them to start their own organisation with greater success. However, the fact is that most of the students do not follow this pattern, and after graduation, most of them start looking for a job. Landing a job is the easiest path from where they can start the journey. As the job path is easy, the growth for long term perspective is not attractive. Here the increment in the pay is based on the knowledge learned during the experience and actions. It is very much advisable to make the right decision at the start. Just looking for a job to fulfill basic daily needs should not be the approach.
Doing higher study is the most attractive option as industries are looking for skilled and subject experts. They have a great chance to work globally as international companies prefer to have skill and expertise in their team. They are the most sought after people for all production processes and manufacturing industries. Design and innovation segment is very attractive for the young minds who love to play with machines and like to do JUGAAD or the ‘jod-tod’ (break-fix) instead of theoretical applications. Higher studies and design innovation segments are lucrative and incremental growth sectors.
While selecting a particular domain for your journey, it should be kept in mind that design innovation is a reverse engineering process and is most suitable for those who love to work beyond the books and boundaries, while subject matter expertise is a prerequisite for research and development where working boundaries are set by theories and fundamentals. It is also to be seriously considered that if you like the entrepreneurial domain, multi-skills expertise is the key to success and many resources other than personal skills and expertise are required.
Design innovation has vast scope, as the professionals and the experts develop new products by finding the gap in the present product and improve it as per the requirement of the society and market, using the reverse engineering process or the trial and error mechanism.
Research is the domain that involves the biggest risk as well as the greatest return. It requires futuristic vision. People with great passion and dedication to explore some¬thing new and creative have a great scope in this domain.
Research should be adopted by the established organisations as the associated people don’t know the outcome of research even after investing time, money and skills. They must have the capacity to predict future requirements and develop products accordingly. This domain requires the greatest of intellectual work. The returns are fantastic once a product is developed. We can earn a handsome selling price and royalty for generations.
2.2 Switching from Job to Creativity
Every one of us may have one or more dreams which we would like to realize, but because of daily scheduled life, we lack the time to fulfill them. For example, during school days, we used to play musical instruments and now we want to learn that again. However, a scheduled job life does not offer that liberty and the dream remains unfulfilled. All of us want to live a self-sufficient life after working for a couple of years. We want to have sufficient time for our personal life along with financial security. Jobs offer only linear growth and so financial freedom becomes a protracted dream. Switching from job to any other domain is an attractive deal, but many of us don’t do it. There are many reasons behind the job switch philosophy but some of the most common reasons are:
• Boredom resulting from routine work
• Desire to do something new
• Yearning to fulfill their dreams
In a scheduled job life, most of us work for what the organisation requires but not in line with our expertise. Many experts even with different skills only work with excel or power points. If it happens for a long period, we lose our creativity and want to come out from this frustration and start searching for a new job or look towards entrepreneurship.
People in the job domains mostly work under stress to meet the targets and do hard work beyond their capacities. They are involved in their daily tasks in such a way that they do not get sufficient time to update themselves with market trends and hence miss out on opportunities.Creators, like design experts and innovators, generally prefer a nonscheduled job profile as they generally get bored with the same task if needed to perform for a long period. Creators, like research experts and subject matter experts, like to work in a systemic manner. All types of creators usually invest in themselves to update and multiply their skills and that’s why they are able to multiply their potential, time and intellect level. They keep looking for new opportunities instead of new jobs. The very common differences between the job seekers and the creators will discuss in the next part.
About Author
Manoj Gattani Ph.D is an Energy Engineering design specialist and has innovated many products and processes like Crack Gel for Roof top Seepage, Efficient Wood Stove for cooking, Solar Hybrid Cooling Device, Bio Waste to Energy Device and few more. He Invented GOPIEngine, a Fuel less Magnetic Engine for Mechanical and Electrical Power Generation. He has developed theories on Permanent Magnet Engine which is first of its kind. He has 14 Patents at various stages. He has received many prestigious awards from national and international organizations. He is mentoring and heading 6 Startups and Business ventures. He authored high impacting and best-selling book “The Journey from IDEA to ORGANISATION”
Connect with Manoj at manoj.gattani@igetindia.com
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