iCamp (23 February, Bangalore): Innovation Camp (iCamp) was held on Saturday in Bangalore. More than 80 people attended the day-long event, which was hosted by MindTree Consulting Ltd. The idea of the camp was to share individual experiences and opinions about innovation in different contexts in the unstructured way that a BarCamp permits.

The talks ranged from the basic “What is innovation?” to ones connecting humanitarianism and spirituality to innovation. A session on innovation in MBA education sparked off discussions on how this idea can be scaled to introduce innovation at all levels of education. While many of the subjects revolved around IT, a number of examples were drawn from non-IT fields as well—not just technology products, but say, traffic jams in Bangalore, and how innovation is needed to address the problem.

Another topic was whether one can be taught to innovate, or a framework be developed in which every person can innovate. Views differed, but everyone agreed that to commercialize innovations, structured processes help. Innovation need not be groundbreaking or disruptive, even finding a shorter route to the office can be called an innovation.

One speaker even innovated with his talk on “Innovative ideas to manage relationships”. He did not have any ideas on the subject, but made use of the collective intelligence of the audience and their experiences to come up with theories.

The day concluded with Knowledge Café, a round table discussion over coffee, jalebis and samosas on “Does process help or hurt innovation?” A majority of the campers felt that process is required, but it should be without restrictions.

Kenney Jacob is co-founder of Thiruvananthapuram-based mobile start-up MobMe Wireless Solutions Pvt. Ltd