Having entrepreneurial experience of 9 years, Syam Nair has’ been constantly involved in development and implementation of multiple STEM projects under state run colleges and schools in India. He was also one of the panel members of innovation oriented mentorship community developed for young entrepreneurs and college going students in India. Currently Syam is working as a research assistant at National University of Ireland, Galway.

While consulting for student innovation labs, the observations I had was that the engineering students are focused more on the technology side rather than analysing how to identify and approach a problem. While story telling and basics of persona canvas helped the learners to identify a valid problem, most of them had preconceived technological ideas to solve the identified problem. Mindmapping was very useful in addressing this issue, as it allows the learners to think of multiple possibilities of solving the problem at hand rather than thinking in a preconceived direction. Mindmapping works best when used in groups of 3 – 5, as it can limit the scope of branches and give more focus. This also helps in the elimination of ideas in further steps. From personal experience, mindmapping creates a focus on processes required, while exploring as many ideas as possible.