Talk by Dr. Swati Piramal

Dr. Swati Piramal, Vice Chairperson of Piramal Life Sciences Limited and Director of Piramal Healthcare Limited, was the second speaker who came to DAIS & addressed the students of Grades 9, 10 & 11 on 15th March, 2013. Dr. Piramal leads a team of scientists who have filed over 200 patents worldwide and she spoke to the students about innovation and patents.

Most students knew the basics of what a patent was but Dr. Piramal was able to explain to us in exact terms what constitutes an innovation and how a patent is generally filed. She cleared a lot of misconceptions in students’ minds about innovation and used examples from film clippings of classical physicists like Edison, Galileo and Newton to clearly elucidate her presentation.

She used the examples of these leaders to clearly demonstrate to the students the importance of innovation, the need to think outside the box and the time and effort involved, at times, in tasting success. Innovation differs from inventions in that innovation refers to the use of a better and a novel idea whereas invention means the creation of that new idea into a tangible form. It also differs from improvement; innovation must actually be smarter.

Dr. Piramal also emphasized the ethical implications of filing a patent and how important it was to ensure that the intellectual property rights of people were respected. She said that patents were “the currency of the future” and that companies were now compared not by their revenues and profit margins, but by the number of patents that they had. She also spoke about the global significance of innovation is globally and how it fuels the economy.

Dr. Piramal also brought with her some of her popular innovations including child-friendly perfume packaged in animal figurine bottles and easy-to-use mosquito repellent bands with Natural Citornella.

Dr. Piramal elaborated on the questions the students asked. As patents were a grey area for several students, there were several questions asked on the process of filing patents and coming up with innovative solutions. Mrs. Swati Piramal has shown us how to think innovatively. Patents are such a fundamental concept in the economy; however, within the classroom we are not taught about the processes involved in actually filing them. Dr. Piramal was able to give us this advice which will be extremely valuable for us when we have our own innovative ideas that will need to be protected by patents. She explained that innovation was all about having a dream about putting one’s mind to doing amazing things & thinking about things that were absolutely new to the world.