The keynote on the second day was delivered by Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States. He spoke about how innovation by a few sharp minds can be scaled up to bring prosperity in developing countries. He used props, statistics, and his personal experience in countries, most recently in Haiti. Here are a few notes about his speech and general observations about IIT:

Bill Clinton addressing PanIIT

1. In the middle of his speech he got a call on his cell. He took the call since he said that only Hillary had that number, and told her that he was in the middle of his speech to IIT. He then asked her “Yes or no?” and hung up after that
2. I met a recent graduate from IIT (Chemical Eng – 2009 batch) doing his masters at MIT. He was just one of 15 from his batch of 500 to come to the US. During my time it was not uncommon to have 10 times that many come abroad.
3. The team that was a runners up to us called ECPS were a group of recent graduates. At a time when most people their age would be looking for their first job, one of them is already running a company with 10 people, they have several clients, and they were able to raise sponsorship money for 3 of their team members to come to Chicago.

More information can be found at Pradeep’s blog and Christopher’s blog. 

It is good to see some real work being done in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship in developing countries. And others that are further along and opening their borders to innovation.