Inaugural Day

The first international conference on “Igniting the Genius Within”, by the Centre for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC), ISB was inaugurated yesterday.

The inaugural session started with a welcome speech by M Rammohan Rao, Dean, ISB. The Dean welcomed the participants to theISB and gave them an overview of the foundation of the School and its current activities.

Prasad Kaipa, Executive Director, CLIC then read out a message for the participants from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, Former President, India. Kalam said he was delighted that CLIC was conducting the conference and added, “This is an important topic for India where we have 540 million youth below the age of 25 years. We are in a critical stage of development and we need the ignited minds of the youth to take this country on the path of sustainable development”. The message continued: “Our country has knowledge excellence with creativity, righteousness and courage. I’m sure the conference will attempt to develop strategies with which all these components might be imbibed among the youth of the nation”.

The participants then shared with each other a symbol like photographs, songs, etc that represented “igniting the genius within” for them.

Dr NB Sudarshan Acharya, National Coordinator, Lead India 2020 Foundation and students from the foundation then shared their experiences with the Lead India 2020 programme.

Dr Ravishankar Gundlapalli, CEO, The Turning Point Academy concluded the inaugural event with a talk about the importance of encouraging the youth to be the next generation of leaders. “This conference is so fitting because the ignition should start with us,” he said. “We all as executives, CEOs and general managers need to teach our youth how to dream big and overcome obstacles. Obstacles will come but we have to teach them how to stay the course and lead the world by 2020 and beyond”.