Mosaic Across Continents: A story from Asia!

Check out the story of a Bangalore-based consultant and author, who has traveled to 90 countries. His areas of expertise include knowledge management (KM), digital media, innovation, entrepreneurship, fine arts, and music. While frequently visiting Singapore to speak at and chair conferences, he met Dr Vincent Ribiere, the co-founder and Managing Director of the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation Southeast Asia (IKI-SEA) at Bangkok University.

They often met at KM conferences and eventually became part of the team that established the KM Global Network, which has associational members in 25 countries (https://www.kmglobalnetwork.org). Vincent also invited Madan to speak at his Creative Bangkok conference in Thailand in 2014 and give a talk on what jazz can teach businesses about creativity.

This conference was organized in collaboration with a team from Montreal. That is how Madan met Lucy Stojak, Patrick Cohendet, and Laurent Simon. They invited him to attend their Summer School on Creativity in an Innovation Society in 2015. Since then, Madan has been a regular guest faculty member and participant at the Summer School.

Although the Summer School is held during the peak of India’s spectacular mango season, it overlaps with Montreal’s amazing International Jazz Festival. Madan considers the 27-hour door-to-door trip each way an acceptable trade-off!

After attending a few Summer Schools, Madan realised that the perspectives, findings, frameworks, and case studies on innovation communities were so valuable that they had to be shared with the outside world in the form of an authoritative book. Thus, was born the collaborative effort, Communities of Innovation: How Organizations Harness Collective Creativity and Build Resilience (World Scientific Publishing Co.).

This 400-page book was published in 2021 and written by experts from three continents: Patrick Cohendet, Madanmohan Rao, Émilie Ruiz (Strasbourg University), Benoit Sarazin (innovation consultant, France), and Laurent Simon. Because of the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the book places a special emphasis on resilience.

Madan was also invited by the Mosaic team to write an article on ‘Frugal Innovation’ for the publication: https://www.revuegestion.ca/l-avenir-de-l-innovation-jugaad-le-juste-equilibre-entre-excellent-et-satisfaisant)

Another valuable connection spawned by Mosaic was between Madan and Erik Grab, Michelin’s Vice President of Strategic Anticipation and Innovation. Erik traveled to New Delhi and Bangalore, India. While there, Madan arranged a meeting with TiE Bangalore, an entrepreneurship development organization. Erik connected with local entrepreneurs and investors to discuss the importance of solving mobility challenges via ecosystems at local, national and global levels (https://yourstory.com/2017/11/transportation-2-0-can-bengalurus-startups-solve-traffic-problems). This helped catalyse more activity towards sustainable mobility among Bangalore’s startups and influencers.

We are now at the dawn of the Age of AI. AI has been in the works for decades, but it has reached new heights of global cognitive impact thanks to the advent of GenAI. Perhaps the time is now ripe for an AI book by the Mosaic team, which Madan is eager to facilitate!!