Kundan Kumar Tripathy

Brainstormer, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur

I spend my days in schools, not teaching, but building the conditions where students stop waiting to be told what to think and start asking what they can build. As Head of Student Development at ODM Educational Group, I run programmes across 15,000+ students that take entrepreneurship, design thinking, and real-world problem-solving out of textbooks and into hallways, labs, and community spaces. One of my favourite moments at work is watching a 13 year old pitch an idea they actually believe in, nervous, imperfect, but completely alive. I've come to believe that innovation isn't a subject. It's a posture. And schools either build it or accidentally kill it. I'm trying to make sure we do the former

Turning classrooms into launchpads. Helping young people find the intersection of what excites them and what the world needs. And honestly unlearning the idea that potential is something you discover late.

Every school has a child who thinks differently, who fidgets during lectures but lights up when given a problem to solve. We've spent decades calling that a discipline issue. What if we called it an asset instead? The next wave of innovation won't come from universities or boardrooms. It'll come from teenagers who were given permission early enough to fail, iterate, and try again. The idea worth spreading: Student development isn't co-curricular. It 'IS' the curriculum

Education Innovation Entrepreneurship Youth Leadership

I first encountered TED through a talk I stumbled on at midnight. I don't even remember which one, but I remember thinking, 'this is what learning is supposed to feel like.' That stayed with me. Years later, I found myself in a completely different role than I'd imagined by not building startups, but building the people who would. Running a Student Development Programme across 15,000+ students, I kept coming back to the same question TED always asks: what's the idea that actually matters here? Bringing TEDx to our students felt like closing a loop. Watching a 16 year old stand on a red circle and say something they genuinely believe, that's the moment I keep working for. TED, for me, isn't content. It's a standard for how seriously we should take ideas.

Reading a room full of teenagers and knowing exactly which one has an idea they haven't said out loud yet. Also, surprisingly detailed spreadsheets. The two are more connected than people think.