Riding the Idea Generation Motorbike

Posted on Feb 08, 2013

What seemed like just another day in the classroom turned out to be unlike any other. Enter, Sumit Roy, lateral thinker extraordinaire! Via a series of mental creative exercises and teamwork enhancement games, our classroom switched from a technical learning hub to a practical creation legoland. That’s right, we spent the afternoon pulling apart lego pieces, talking to our favourite gurus and getting direct advice from them, and learnt how to come up with infinite ideas, in a finite time and space—all through prime numbers and a dictionary. Confused? Good, you're on the right track. Sumit believes in creativity without boundaries and has come up with his own little magical ways to teach others how to practise the same. The key is to make something unique, by placing seemingly opposite things together in order to shock, awe, or grab the attention of an audience/consumer. Sumit stresses on learning how to unlearn, and think like a child again. We're all conditioned to live and work within parameters, when in reality the only limits that exist are the ones we impose on ourselves. I personally loved the exercise where the real me, and the unreal me (which Sumit defines as the part of you that is pure imagination) came together in a jugalbandhi of question–answer rounds, testing my own ability to keep one-upping my own intelligence. Post class, the effect hasn’t worn off, as I've been using his techniques in real world situations and hey! they really do work! Thank you Sumit, for an amazing class that goes far beyond the four walls of the classroom.

Devika Arora