Gitanjali Rao is not your typical tech-savvy innovator. She is a 17-year-old student at MIT who is a scientist, investor, and an advocate for change. She has not only developed a slew of lifesaving devices, but also has published a book and works with children all over the globe to enhance their STEM skills.
Some of the accomplishments, so far, in her 17-year life include the following:
- Tethys, a device to detect lead in drinking water
- EpiOne, a device for the early diagnosis of opioid addition
- A windshield barrier that absorbs laser light, protecting pilots from laser beams directed at aircraft during takeoffs or landings
- A scanning app that detects the toxicity of snakebites
- Technology to better target drug delivery to lung tumors
Rao, who spoke at BMC’s recent conference in New York, shared her experiences with promoting innovative thinking. She has not been around as many seasoned movers and shakers, but it’s notable that she has arrived at a set of repeatable methodologies that enable her to produce idea after idea. While she seeks to help young people open up new doors to innovative thinking, people of all ages in all kinds of organizations stand to benefit from her learnings. The following are the principles that ground her approaches:
- Incorporate design thinking. “All my solutions have had a human-based focus,” Rao said. “It should always focus on how it impacts the user.” Importantly, “empathy, kindness, and human focus are vital to successful innovation.” Innovation is a two-way street, and works best through ongoing iteration from all sides. “Work through the nit-pick areas, work through those things that are constantly going to pull things back.”
- Embrace failure. “Be a risk taker — failure is part of the process,” she advocates. “We need to normalize prototyping and brainstorming. Risks are important, regardless of the rewards.”
- Act now. “There’s no point in waiting to put an idea out there,” Rao said, noting that the more you bounce ideas off people, the better of a chance of success it has. “Communication is the most important area, because you get people’s feedback, and you grow more as an individual.”
- Innovation cannot work on a deadline. “Creativity can’t have a due date,” Rao stated. “You can’t give yourself a stop deadline. Keep everything in circulation, even if you are overwhelmed. You can push things to the side, but keep things in circulation.”
- Persist and stay longer with the problem. “Innovation is not a linear process. there’s no specific way you go about this process,” she pointed out. “You’re supposed to move around, and innovation isn’t prescriptive.”
- Make it a team effort. “When we hear about ideas from the past, everyone was really breaking things down into smaller components,” Rao said. “The smaller ones can be tackled individually. Yes, that works, it’s not efficient though. What we need to focus on is synthesis. Put teams together and then see if innovations work.”
The takeaway from Rao’s inspirational session is that you don’t need to spend a lifetime trying to assemble a great idea — act now, act collaboratively, and keep the ideas rolling.
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