Any new initiative needs a champion apart from the originator. The champion’s duty is to help in taking the cause to its destination. In the case of innovation and entrepreneurship, the champion is the funding institution. There are various kinds of fund institutions in this world and this article’s focus is really not that.
Recently, I saw an article about commercializing one’s thesis and it was about how Stanford’s office of technology licensing is open for commercializing thesis.
The bottom line is that a number of technologies developed at the graduate school level ends up canned, for lack of championing efforts. Incubators are the need of the day at university levels. It becomes highly critical that incubation and funds for any underfunded project(if commercially lucrative and with a business case). Who knows which technology innovation can turn out to be the new google!!
Being an Indian, I would like to see the same happen here, and today I was pleasantly surprised and happy to read this article in livemint. Here is a summary of the article:
- It talks about how IISc has a philosophy and framework of encouraging entrepreneurial spirit in their institution.
- Government of India has plans to introduce a Rs. 25 Crore fund under Technology Incubation Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE) to promote entrepreneurship and will be open for post graduate students in top notch institutions like IISc, IIMs, IITs etc.
- One common identified problem is identifying the right idea to invest.
My thoughts on entrepreneurial activities/incubation initiatives:
- Very good initiatives on the whole
- There will always be a success ratio which will be probably be 50%(ambitious) out of say 100 such ideas invested. Even if one such idea among the 100 clicks - meaning becomes a successful entity, one can expect reasonable returns to cover up the entire investment. A classic example of this is Google.
- I believe that Government on its part should bring in some measures to complement entrepreneurial initiatives at the educational institution level. This can get the incubators into a comfort zone to take on more such initiatives.
- Technology licensing schemes can be made flexible.
- But my sincere desire is to not limit such schemes to top tier institutions alone. I think it should be open to students from any institution and efforts should be taken to identify such innovations.
I am happy that I was a part of one such initiative by HSP Labs in sponsoring and conducting the Technovator 08 event. I look forward to see more such initiatives covering the nook and corner of India in unearthing diamonds.
If you know about any such initiatives at the college level, please drop in a line.
Tags: College, Entrepreneurship, India, Social Responsibility
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