Alchemix: An Active Community of Innovation Practice

Alchemix is a series of curated engagements between innovators, entrepreneurs, creative minds, designers, engaged citizens, investors and… ideas. These sessions bring together the innovation practitioner community every couple of months to debate, discuss, learn and apply.

Here is a quick view into the sessions we have had so far:

Alchemix 1: Innovation and Enterprise in Education, where Chandrakant Singh shared how he has built the Chaitanya Gurukul in remote and rural Bihar, without any electricity or infrastructure; Joining him was Rajat Dhariwal, founder of Mad Rat Games and the multi language Aksharit game.

Watch a video excerpt of the 1st Alchemix session:

Alchemix 2: Applying Innovation to the challenge of Urban Waste Management. Dr. Vishwanath shared details of the innovative Honey Sucker Trucks that will clear septic tanks for a small fee and help farmers find low cost, nutritious fertilizers for their farms; Joining him was Poonam Bir from Daily Dump who is building a profitable model by encouraging people to take responsibility for their wet waste.

Read more on this Session on the blog: Honey Sucker model /  Insights from Daily Dump

For more photos, click here.

Alchemix 3: Innovative Healthcare Models. Nandu Madhava Founder of mDhil interacted with the community on how he has built the idea around healthcare services and why this model is poised to grow; Dr.Shantanu Rahman and Dr. Satish Jeevannavar from the founding team at Nationwide Healthcare services described their disruption in primary health care by focusing on general Practitioners and an electronic medical record.

Watch a quick video excerpt of the 3rd Alchemix session here:

Alchemix sessions explore innovation challenges, tools, frameworks and insights from practitioners. Subjects and examples are culled out from various engagements and research done by the Innovation Alchemy Team. We were inspired by the work they are doing – and believe that you would be too.

Each session provides an opportunity to explore business models, entrepreneurial ideas and established organizations seeking to achieve the next level of scale and impact, applying innovation principles. Our belief is that instead of large events – we need a series of smaller, crisper, more productive discussions to really catalyze innovation. Accordingly, these sessions are a form of collaborative research and learning – and we aim to co-create a series of ideas and frameworks from these discussions, leading to practitioner tools for scale and innovation.

The 4th Alchemix session was held on 12th November 2011, focusing on entrepreneurs and innovators applying Social Media to power their innovative work and business.

The practitioners who shared their ideas included Shradha Sharma, Founder of Yourstory.in; Maya Hemant, Anchor of Social Media at Pratham Books; Sathy Joseph – Online communication specialist at Ashoka India; Siddharth Mangharam, Founder and CEO of Floh; and Nathália Matychevicz & Shankar Soma, Anchors of social media at mDhil. Read more about the session.

Our fifth session was on April 26^th at the Bombay HUB in Bandra, Mumbai. The theme of the session was ‘Innovating for the Urban Poor’ and looked at the need and opportunity for breakthrough innovation designed for, and implemented with, the urban poor. The discussion was kick-started through the insights and perspectives of social enterprise models working in this space in Mumbai including Swasth India and WaterWalla .

Review the trigger thoughts on the subject of urban poverty that formed the basis for the fifth Alchemix discussion, on Scribd.

Read more on the insights that emerged in this discussion.

Seating at these sessions is usually limited to the first 40 people who register. For more details or to seek a speaking spot at these sessions please send an email to aditi@innovationalchemy.com. Follow us on Twitter @innovalchemy for regular updates.

Look forward to seeing you at the next session!