HOW TO TRAIN YOUR MIND TO INNOVATE

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR MIND TO INNOVATE

Pursue higher degrees, but make them useful

Avik.Das1@timesgroup.com

From his days in school in Guwahati, Mrinal Bhattacharjee wanted to be an engineer. He loved doing his science class experiments. “Going to college, it felt like computer science would be a cool subject to study. I thought it allowed problems to be solved quicker, allowed you to see your solutions at work,” he says. And that’s what he did at NIT Karnataka.

Bhattacharjee, who is today a principal engineer with US data management company NetApp’s India centre, has seven patents to his name. He joined NetApp in 2004, and filed his first patent three years later. It was on file systems, around how to take a snapshot of the data at any given time. “A snapshot is a point-intime copy of your data. That is the core building block of data protection,” he says.

While the snapshot was the end result, a lot of background work was automatically done in the system to preserve the file. Bhattacharjee found a way to minimise the background process so that it reduced the system load.

Just like for other patent holders featured in this column, the maiden patent was a lesson for Bhattacharjee in understanding how to write a patent application, talk to patent lawyers and patent committees to figure out whether an idea is patentable.

His next patents were again in data storage management. “When data comes in, we need to decide where we will place data, which is essential to be able to retrieve it quickly. Data placement algorithms are an essential part of the data storage system. We redesigned the system, rewrote the whole thing to work on solid state drives which could have 100 processors. That enabled NetApp to have hybrid systems (combining flash memory and hard disk drives).”

He says a patenting mindset requires first to have a desire to solve problems in interesting ways. “And then, when you have a company culture that fosters innovation, a set of people you can brainstorm with, things become relatively easy,” he says.

While he did not pursue higher education, he advises others to take it up. “It is not impossible to innovate without a higher degree, but if one goes for it, one must take it seriously, make sure it is helpful in the innovation journey,” he says.

A patent he has most recently filed is related to data protection against ransomware, a malware which has become a raging cyber security threat. Bhattacharjee’s innovation identifies a potential virus quickly and immediately cuts off the storage system so that the virus cannot encrypt the data. “It feels great to be solving real world customer problems,” he says.

When you have a company culture that fosters innovation, a set of people you can brainstorm with, things become relatively easy.

Mrinal Bhattacharjee PRINCIPAL ENGINEER, NETAPP