This week, Mr. Sankar S. Villupuram, Digital Services Leader (East Asia) from @arupgroup joined us at #poli3149 and gave an excellent guest lecture on innovation in public sector. Mr. Villupuram recommended the book “Jugaad Innovation” to the class and rebutted the popular assumption that “innovation is expensive” 💸

Mr. Villupuram showed us use cases where AI is used to solve real-life problems, such as landslide prediction, facade inspection and illegal structure investigations 🔍. We were offered a glimpse on how data is collected, cleansed and used to train AI models in real life, and the many factors that affect the accuracy of the models.

Mr. Villupuram shared with the class his insight that in real innovation, the most important component is not the tech but the people.

In designing innovative solutions, we must have a good understanding of the human behaviour, motivations and incentives.