Forrester in one of its 2007 report mentioned the need for Indian IT industry to be more like value add advisors and innovators and go up the value chain to compete with the upcoming IT work force from different parts of the world. While India engineering centers contribute a lot towards “product and solution development and execution”, our contribution towards “product conceptualization, strategic technology future and thought leadership”, need more impetus. One of the key accelerators that will help propel India Engineering towards Innovation Excellence will be the vast talent pool generated by Tier -2, Tier-3 colleges in India as they will be major players of the future of our IT industry. Touching these students while in college and preparing them for the Industry with a long term vision of going up in the value chain is a challenge. Seeding these students with the right principles of industry perspective technology learning and work ethics will help accelerate the transformation we look for in a few years. Here we articulate the vision for an ideal student coming out of the college, and propose ideas on bridging the gaps. We think it is a social responsibility for all of us to be part of this transformation.

Vision
We need to strategically profile the ideal student passing out of the college, in terms of Industry requirements. By vision we don’t mean the curriculum or the contents of the individual courses in universities. An ideal student ready for the industry should be able to independently think about the problem areas to come up with solutions and have the right attitude towards technology (both software/hardware) development, innovation and team work. He should have the following key attributes:
1. Drive and creativity in IT problem solving – Strong in fundamentals, Programming skills, Algorithms.
2. Real Life Technology Exposure – Good exposure to latest open source technologies and any other major technologies. Should have gone through at least one complete project life cycle with real life technologies.
3. Self Learning Abilities – With the information deluge in the internet era, assimilation of the right information on demand to produce right results.
4. Courage to delve into the unknown – Ability to move to new technology areas and learn without expensive training or hand holding.
5. Pro-active thinking – More inquisitive and questioning in nature to get deeper understanding of the problem at hand and analyze quality tradeoffs in algorithms and design with propensity towards innovation.
6. Work ethics and Soft skills –Integrity, commitment, hard work and dedication, Good Communication skills, email etiquette.