Dr. Chintan Vaishnav

My career began as a research engineer at the Bell Laboratory, designing highly fault-tolerant large networks. I was impelled to leave this lucrative corporate career and become a “penniless” graduate student because Icould not see how our frantic building of new technologies was connected to solving many of the world’s most pressing challenges like hunger, poverty, etc. I realized that, as an engineer I had no tools to think about these problems. This discontent made me turn to studying socio-technical systems.

With a desire to study technology influences policy, in turn society, and vice versa, I pursued a PhD in Engineering Systems (now IDSS) at MIT. My PhD work on how governments can balance regulation vs. innovation as new technological paradigms disrupt the old ones has been applied to many industries and is arguably more relevant for the coming age of AI.

After graduating, I was fortunate to take on a role that aligned closely with my interests, spanning both the MIT Sloan School of Management, where I served as a Senior Lecturer, and the Tata Center for Technology and Design, where I was the founding Academic Director. My work was centered around teaching, research, and action on the challenges faced by resource-constrained environments. A replica of the MIT Center has been built at IIT Bombay, where I have been a visiting faculty. Together, these centers have trained over 375 graduate students, from 18 different disciplines, who have taken on problems in the areas of healthcare, education, water, agriculture, housing, energy, and environment, and have performed some 300,000 hours of field work, cumulatively. Their work has resulted in more than 100 top publications, 80 patents, and 15 startups.

My work—particularly on innovations for underserved communities I often immersed myself into—eventually led to the opportunity to lead the Government of India’s Atal Innovation Mission for the past four years. During this time, we implemented several large-scale initiatives aimed at building India’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. For example, in 10,000 schools across India's 90% districts, we have set up Atal Tinkering Labs—creative maker spaces that have introduced Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship to over 11 million students. These efforts have helped India improve its position on the UN Global Innovation Index, moving up from rank 86 to 39.

During India’s Presidency of the G20 in 2023, I chaired the creation of the Startup20 Engagement Group. Today, this group serves as the world’s highest policy forum that amplifies the voice of startups in the global economic discourse.

Through these experiences, I’ve cultivated a strong interest in—and substantial expertise with—developing innovation and startup ecosystems at the institutional, regional, national, and international levels, with a focus on scalable impact and inclusive growth.