What spaces / environments foster innovative thinking & sustainable entrepreneurship? How can I contribute to the growth of the creative economy in India? What first steps can I take in co-creating such an ecosystem, connecting the disparate players & creating the partnerships to realise this?


Background
Our 'Flashjob economy' project from The Future of Infrastructure class, Richard Florida's Flight of the Creative Class, The Start-Up Genome Report (http://tcrn.ch/IixHpd), conversations with family, Indian students, engineers & entrepreneurs, Nandan Nilekani's Imagining India, Notion Ink's Adam Tablet project, Sandbox-Network, ITP

Implementation
My thesis started off as an exploration of the environments that are conducive to innovative thinking and collaborative doing. I started off with the belief that there were many people in India doing incredible work around learning, making, building companies, funding and incubating, and that these efforts were yet to be tied into a cohesive system. As my thesis started to increase in complexity however, I decided to pick one sliver of the problem to focus on and I chose learning. I developed the concept for a mobile technology based skill lab, a physical, collaborative space that where engineers & designers could learn by working on real life projects. An important part of this idea involves my month long trip to Bangalore to user-test this concept. The feedback & learning from this trip, the conversations & stories, bitter realities & serendipitous meetings, and the ensuing evolution of my idea forms the heart of my thesis.