Odisha HRD

Besides IITs, 20 universities to be selected to seed innovation; VSSUT and SU should join hands and lobby for one of the 20 slots

September 15th, 2010

Following is an excerpt from a report in Business Standard.

 

The newly constituted National Innovation Council (NIC) headed by Sam Pitroda, aims to have a $1-billion (around Rs 4,600 crore) fund to promote new ideas for inclusive development and innovation in the country.

“Our objective is to setup a $1-billion fund for the NIC but how big it will be depends on how the market reacts and how much money we are able to raise. We want to see if we can set up a large fund,” Pitroda, advisor to the PM, told Business Standard.

A week ago, the Council had announced the setting up of a fund with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore to encourage innovation. The government will contribute 10-20 per cent to the fund with the rest coming from other sources like private funds, institutions and foundations.

Last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had approved the establishment of the Council with a mandate to prepare a road map for the Decade of Innovation (2010-2020) by evolving an Indian model of innovation, focusing on inclusive growth and creating an appropriate ecosystem.

Going ahead, innovation councils will be set up at the state and sectoral levels and Pitroda said that five states, including Orissa and Karnataka, have already shown interest in setting up their own innovation councils. The NIC will also have innovation centres in universities and innovation clusters to create regional hubs.

It will delineate appropriate policy initiatives within the government to spur innovation. It will also promote setting up of Sectoral Innovation Councils and State Innovation Councils.

The NIC has also collaborated with industry chambers CII and Ficci to identify 20 industrial clusters in the country like Indore, Bhopal, Gandhinagar and Kanpur, among others, to provide guidelines for innovation.

“Those clusters will be selected where there is a minimum critical mass of industries of some kind and then we will give them an innovation toolkit. The toolkit will be a set of guidelines on how to innovate. Moreover, we are also selecting 20 universities, besides the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) where we can do seed innovation,” he said.

Prof Sanjay Dhande, IIT Kanpur director, who is a member of the Council, is in the process of identifying the universities which will then be given the innovation toolkit to be able to connect with industry.

Odisha should lobby to have at least one industrial cluster (perhaps Rourkela) in the list of 20 clusters and lobby to have at least one university in the list of 20 universities to which innovation toolkit will be given. I think VSSUT and Sambalpur University should join  hands to stake claim for one of the 20 university slots. Considering their proximity, it may work.

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The setting up of the innovation council was approved a month month back. Following is an excerpt from another report in Business Standard.

Last month, the prime minister had approved the setting up of the council to prepare a road map for the Decade of Innovation 2010-2020. The council also launched its portal, where a compilation of scientific achievements that could be used to improve the quality of life would be available.

A similar council called National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship was formed by the Commerce Department in the USA in 2009. In July 2010 its membership was announced.

Entry Filed under: National Innovation Council,Sambalpur University,VSS University of Technology (formerly UCE Burla)