How can industry engage with academia to bridge skills gap?

We have all heard of famous brands of the past like Ambassador car, Bajaj scooter, Dynora television, HMT watches, and so on. While they were some of the most trusted brands at one time they did not survive eventually. The reason lies in the famous saying ‘Change is the only thing that is constant’.

Those who can cope with changing times are the ones who have emerged successful. Changes in the society have pushed the industry to undergo several changes from a having static, structured, process-oriented business model to the digital era characterized by flexible working, remote teams and agility. Education institutes cannot stay far from following the wave of change as education forms the basis of everything we do.

The skills needed by the industry have evolved from having an academic degree alone to behavioral skills, communication skills and the propensity to learn apart from the academic degree. Today most leaders agree that coming up with disruptive ideas, critical thinking and innovative methods of problem solving are key to keeping businesses alive and thriving.

If academic institutes focus on making students ready for change, inculcate the art of thinking innovatively to solve problems and imbibe behavioral skills with a focus on values, they could reduce the skill gap that students face when they join the workforce of a company.

In a constantly changing world it is quite impossible to determine which specific technology skills will steer the career of a student many years from now. Inculcating a practice of Experiential learning is key to learning and adopting new technologies.

Developers can use several Cloud Paks that help ease out building of applications without having in-depth knowledge of each part of the technology stack being used. To promote experiential learning we have also mentored academic institutes on projects in the domains of healthcare, agriculture, resilience and new innovation such as projects on usage of weather data for predicting sun cover for a solar car, elder care by the NAO Robot, mimicking of a fore-arm for physiotherapy and so on.

Hosting innovation challenges is one of the oldest methods of fostering innovation. You’ll be surprised that simplest to very complex innovations have come through some of these challenges. The cello tape was invented through a challenge at a paint company based on the difficulties that the company was facing during dual tone painting.

A simple mixture of glue and water ensured that the first paint could be covered by a newspaper (stuck using the solution) while the adjacent area was being painted with another color. This led to the invention of the cello tape. Another example was the invention of the air conditioner. Who could have imagined that the very first idea of the air conditioner came from an innovation challenge at a printing press.

Last, but not the least, the greatest of inventors need to imbibe values such as honesty, truthfulness, humility, courage, ability to take risks, kindness and accepting failure. I am reminded of the story of Thomas Alva Edison, the great inventor. Edison had attempted making the bulb with almost 1,000 attempts before he finally made one and when he was asked as to how it felt to fail a 1,000 times, he just said that these were a 1,000 steps to make a bulb and not his failures!

It is important to be able to take risks and accept failures as steps towards success. The industry can facilitate sessions for students to share industrial ethics and practices that have led to successful businesses to help students imbibe these traits.

A strong bonding between the academic institutes and the industry can be key to bridging the gap today. The collaboration should not be limited to projects and industry visits but to joint curricula development, joint research activities, problem solving through innovation challenges, entrepreneurship development programs and sharing ethical aspects of industry workplace, among others. This is a win-win for the industry and academic institutes and importantly it gets students to be ready for the future.

I would like to conclude by quoting a famous saying by Malcolm X: ‘The Future Belongs to Those Who Prepare for it Today’.

• Mona Bharadwaj
• The author is Head - University Relations, IBM India.