Innovation Cycles
An overview of our last year Innovation cycles
Innovation Cycles
In our first year of operation (2017-18) , an Innovation Cycle adopted a 4-step I-D-O-C approach
Ideate - Design - Optimize - Create
in order to spark children’s minds and begin their journey from creative thinking to the realities of construction of prototypes or models. Each innovation Cycle involves a total classroom time of 6-8 hrs.
Themes
The different themes we experimented with were:
a. Solar based Products
Explore existing solar innovations and think about how we can use solar energy to solve problems and design new products
b. UpCycling
Use of upcycling for waste management and making useful things out of old or waste items around us.
c. Hacks (improvement of everyday use objects)
Identifying how an existing everyday object can be improved or creating a completely new and innovative everyday item to use.
Skills & Values
This entire process was built on the backbone of skills like
Creativity - Collaboration - Communication - Empathy
Exploring, identifying and trying to fix real-world problems targets empathy and creativity skills among students.
During the entire optimization and creation process, students are pushed for strong collaboration and effective communication between the group members and external mentors.
The end showcases and pitches become the points for pushing the communication and presentation ability of the students.
Innovation Cycles - Earlier Design Process - IDOC.png