Faculty and students at IITK respect the fact that to do path breaking research, in addition to knowledge in an area, one requires creativity, self belief, courage and persistence.
Great research requires risk taking ability. The IITK culture offers support and encouragement to take on challenging work. This enables researchers to work on the important problems in their field. The strong institutional support enables the researchers to ask tough questions knowing that finding the answers will take time and effort.
At IITK, there is great support for creativity driven exploration. For example tinkering. Tinkering has led to some of the greatest discoveries and inventions. The IITK environment supports and enables tinkering. This support backs creativity and helps researchers try out ideas easily. An inconsistency noticed while doing creativity driven exploration could be the small crack that ultimately opens big doors to new knowledge.
Quality research happens more often in a culture where free thinking is encouraged and that is very true for IITK. The drive and commitment for research is sustained because at IITK a researcher is able to enjoy the research work to the fullest.