PAVAN SONI Corporate Strategy & Policy

Statement of Purpose
I want to be a teacher. I believe that teachers are the single most important catalysts of change in
any society. Innovation being closest to my heart and been associated with innovation for past
five years, I believe that I can be a good scholar of Innovation Management. Over the years, the
access to the worlds of academia and corporate has helped me shape up my research agenda
around innovation. It will be more specifically on Creativity and Corporate Innovation
Management. I would further want to investigate into the role of tools and techniques in
managing a systematic Innovation Program.

My professional experience at Wipro and other consulting assignments have been very useful in
shaping my research agenda. Here I would want to highlight my passion and relevant experience
in teaching. The demanding job at Wipro and family commitments doesn’t keep me away from
my interest in teaching over the week-ends. Ranging from the B-Schools to Engineering
Colleges across India, I lecture at a host of institutes. My focus is on teaching under-privileged
students at Tier- II engineering colleges and management institutes. The subjects I do research
and teaching on are: Technology & Innovation Management, Design and Creativity. Cases on
how organizations and individuals have made an impact by challenging the best practices and
adopting the next practices form the core of my cases. I have developed my own course content
assimilated from various formal and informal sources. This assists me do study on often ignored
areas, such as: Social Entrepreneurship; Role of Creativity in Society; and Innovation in
Education; amongst others. My work on ‘Innovation in Education’ got me invited to speak at the
prestigious TEDx at BITS Goa in early 2010. There I discussed about the journey of an idea
from ‘Mind to Market’. Often I teach students who are quite elder to me, but that age gap never
comes in the way of teaching and learning. It only gives me more confidence. A running
compendium of my research activities is maintained at my blog- www.pavansoni.net. It is a
channel through which I propagate the concepts and learning to an audience which is far and
wide spread.

At this juncture, I have made up my mind to engage in research on a full- time basis. Now it is
the calling of true love. I wish to invest the next few years into getting focused and obtain a
Doctoral Program from a coveted institute. I am interested in learning about how sustainable
innovation happens in a corporate context and how the innovation ecosystem works, not just to

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PAVAN SONI Corporate Strategy & Policy

generate ideas but also to shape those. Focus would be on innovation in emerging economies
where technology access is often limited, yet talent is richly available. I have been studying
about Open Innovation Models and Client Centric Innovation Models in past. My work on Open
Innovations got acknowledge by IEEE at the IEEE International Conference on Management of
Innovation and Technology (ICMIT) in 2008. Further, my research on Open Innovation and the
resulting non-linear growth was also featured at the 5 th ASIALICS International Conference at
IIM Bangalore in 2008. On Innovation Models, I presented my paper on Client Centric
Innovation at the Asia Strategy Summit held in October 2010 in New Delhi. The paper discussed
the various elements of an innovation model, including: Idea Lounge, Systematic Creativity
Workshops, and a Joint-Innovation Council.

It is well known that research is a factor of ecosystem. I am keen on being associated with an
institute that gives me an opportunity to conduct research in a greater depth, yet be connected to
multiple disciplines and groom me as a first class researcher. IIM Bangalore appears at the top of
my list of the institutions where academic rigor constantly meets practical application. I see a
good alignment between my interest in innovation and one of the core research areas at IIM
Bangalore– Corporate Strategy & Policy. The institute has arguably one of the largest faculty
strength in the space of management and strategy. The recent work done at the institute indicates
a lot of research around institutional innovations, especially in influencing the culture of
innovation. The researchers of the likes of Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan and Prof. Ganesh Prabhu
have been leaders in the space of innovation and entrepreneurship, and had seminal contribution
to the field. Further the work done at NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning and the
collaboration IIM Bangalore has to the leading academic institutions is an additional motivation
to engage with the coveted institute. With my experience and passion in the area of innovation, I
am confident of bringing freshness to the existing research. In the end, I thank you for taking
time out and considering me as a potential researcher at your esteemed institute.

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