Saturday, April 16 2005 09:57 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Hyderabad: Calling for co-operation among South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) members in sharing their core competence in different areas for a win-win situation, President A P J Abdul Kalam yesterday (Apr 15, 2005) said the prosperity of any nation would depend on the growth of creative leaders and innovative organisations who can create wealth through dedicated project management.

"We should disseminate best practices on Project Management to different agencies. In this connection, I would like the SARRC Countries to share their core competence in different areas so that it will become a win-win situation for all," Kalam said in his key-note address after inaugurating the Asia-Pacific Conference of the Project Management Institute (PMI) through videoconference mode.

Delivering the address from the Rashtrapati Bhavan through videoconference, he said creative leadership was a pre-requisite for success of any project in Government or private sector.

"Creative leadership means exercising the vision to change the traditional role from the commander to the coach, manager to mentor, from director to delegator and from one who demands respect to one who facilitates self-respect. I am sure all the institutions and the future aspiring institutions are spearheaded by creative leadership," Kalam said.

He said that a major thrust should be on increasing the number of creative leaders and innovative organisations to ensure prosperity and development.

The three-day conference, titled 'Gyan Lahari' (Knowledge Wave), is aimed at providing a platform for academicians, entrepreneurs, students and industrialists in the Asia Pacific region to share their experiences and knowledge and increase awareness about Project Management.

The Indian School of Business (ISB), located on the city outskirts, is hosting the conference.

Identifying five core areas - agriculture and agro processing, Education and Healthcare, Information and Communication Technologies, Infrastructure and Critical Technologies - to make India a developed nation, Kalam said "Work should start simultaneously in all these areas in a mission mode."

Stating that propagation of successful programmes could serve as continuous feedback to all project managers, the President added, "I have been suggesting that all Government projects must be executed as mission mode projects."

Replying to questions from the audience, Kalam said that Information Technology alone was not enough to bring prosperity. "The IT, when combined with other domains, brings value addition and wealth generation. Some of the areas like Bioinformatics, Tele-education, Tele-medicine, e-Governance, e-commerce, e-business, bio-nano-info technologies will together bring the boom to any nation.

"Apart from this, knowledge products arising out of IT will also be a value added wealth generator. For bridging the rural-urban divide we need to work on language neutral operating systems and application servers," he said.

Agreeing with a questioner that world-class infrastructure was needed in India, the President said, "We have large programmes, which are already launched for building long distance road connectivity. Similarly, We have a programme called Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA), which will specifically address the problem of providing infrastructure in the rural sector and bring the connectivity to the urban areas."