?"We are living in very exciting times. Evolution of Internet has brought one of the biggest revolutions in the world. Today Internet is bringing the entire global community together and this offers very different ways of looking at challenges ahead of us," Pitroda, the Adviser to the Prime Minister on Public Information, Infrastructure and Innovations, said.

The solutions for these challenges should be thought out well and innovation offered unique opportunity to change the paradigm of conventional development, he said.

Delivering a lecture at the Technopark here, Pitroda, who has been made the 'development mentor of Kerala', called for bringing out new innovations, dismantling the old systems of working.

He said people with great ideas would definitely have the opportunity to implement their ideas with the right funding.

But he felt that the country had a dearth of domain expertise and that was a major challenge for the economy's growth.

"We are growing at over eight per cent and have over 550 million youngsters below the age of 25. A lot of interesting technologies offer unique ways to address situations and concerns." 

The country had got the right ingredients ready and all that was needed was to use them in the right measure to turn into a reckoning power and make India a leader globally, he added.

The talk on "Leadership and Innovation: Ideas for India" was organised by Aspen Institute India and Group of Technology Companies at Technopark.