Joint initiative aims to foster telecom innovation with younger academic talents and attract them to join the workforce
Wipro Ltd. (NYSE:WIT), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, today announced the successful completion of the final round of ‘Brainstorm 2014’–The Nokia Networks and Wipro R&D IT Challenge, an initiative to foster telecom innovation with younger talents and attract them to join the workforce of the two companies.
The first edition of ‘Brainstorm 2014’ provided an opportunity to the engineering and B-school students to present their ideas that can help shape the future of telecommunications industry. This contest was open to pre-final year students from selected engineering and management campuses.The contest saw enthusiastic participation, with over 400 registrations from over 30 premier business management and engineering colleges, across the country, including the IIMs and IITs.
The top 3 teams in this year’s contest were from NITIE Mumbai, IIFT Kolkata and DoMS, IIT Madras. The idea on data service innovation presented by the team from IIFT Kolkata was announced as the best by a panel consisting of members from both Wipro and Nokia Networks. The team from DoMS, IIT Madras, which presented idea on automatic meter reading (AMR) implementation in telecom industry, was the first runner-up, while NITIE Mumbai received the award for the most innovative idea on real time big data analysis for tailor made mobile plans. The top ideas suggested innovative solutions to deal with challenges in the areas of Telco Cloud and Big Data Analytics.
Vanessa Candow, Head of IT for R&D, Nokia Networks, handed over the prizes to the winning teams in the presence of Joint Innovation Council members from both Nokia Networks and Wipro at the Grand Finale held in Bangalore. The winners will also have a chance to develop their ideas and deploy the solution in a test environment at the Wipro campus in Bangalore.
Candow said,“Innovation is a vital part of the Nokia culture so it was natural for us to foster innovation with younger academic talents for new technologies and business models, to shape the future of the telecommunication industry. Together with Wipro, we encouraged open collaboration and co-creation through this initiative, bringing out truly exciting ideas that otherwise may not have been highly visible to either company.”
“The telecom industry is witnessing a change with an increased focus on reducing costs and simplifying operations. This has created the inherent need to enable innovation and encourage new ideas,” said Vinay Rawat, Vice-President and Global Head -Network Equipment Providers, Wipro Ltd. He also added, “The industry-academia collaboration holds great potential for creating and supporting the growth of communities within institutions and enabling their early involvement with the challenges faced in the industry. We hence, rolled out this contest amongst the top colleges in India to look for the best and most innovative ideas that can be applied.”In September 2013, Nokia Networks and Wipro created a joint Innovation Council with an aim to take their partnership a notch above from delivering IT services and projects, to fostering a culture of innovation. Clearly, academia was one such channel to get innovative ideas from, and hence, Brainstorm 2014 was launched as a key initiative by the members of this council.
