In the previous column, I wrote about techpedia.in, a portal of tech projects by students which brings together industry, grassroots innovators and the youth, and promotes collaborative research. If various technical universities continue to take interest as is evident now, it won’t be difficult to imagine that such a platform may have more than a million projects and ideas in a few years.

The Gujarat Technical University has decided to set up Navsarjan Sankul (innovation clusters) in which various technical institutions have been mapped to different medium and small scale enterprise (MSME) industrial clusters. It is well known that most jobs are generated by MSMEs and the informal sector. And if their ability to generate jobs has to be sustained and invigorated, then infusion and implosion of innovations is inevitable. There are several ways in which the innovation eco-system can be made vibrant. These alternatives are also challenges. I hope that young students and cluster coordinators will join hands in creating a new momentum for inclusive growth in this decade of innovation. The only thing that will become a casualty is inertia.

Let the sceptics celebrate their inertia while the entrepreneurs and young innovators will ignite fireflies of creativity as has been attempted by the Honey Bee Network for so long.

The first challenge is to map four aspects of technology usage at MSME clusters and in the neighbouring rural and urban communities. The first aspect is benchmarking the current level of energy, material and technology youths in the enterprise. Second is identifying any innovation that the MSME unit may have tried. Third is to identify the unsolved problems. And the fourth is to identify the policy bottlenecks which are coming in the way in realising fully the entrepreneurial potential.

GTU has provided three credits for identifying a problem at the end of the third year and four credits for solving it in the fourth year by every student. Different universities can develop different models. The Punjab Technical University has not only found the idea worthwhile but has also offered to put some scholarships for outstanding projects besides awards for the successful completions. The Rajasthan Technical University has also shown interest in taking the model forward in its own way. Several other states are testing the idea and hopefully will join hands. The ministries of science and technology and micro, small and medium enterprises may also find this platform worthy of joining hands in due course. In any case, the clusters have to have the hunger to engage with young minds in technology institutions.

The second challenge is to identify the existing projects which as such or by pooling several projects together can solve an existing problem. Since the academics-industrial linkage has not been very vibrant in most states, this identification will not happen automatically. Workshops will have to be organised in each cluster to facilitate such identification.

The third challenge is to identify mentors for specific individual, pooled or kho-kho (that is, relay) projects. GTU has already identified about 100 PhD holder faculty members who may volunteer for the purpose. In addition, they will also help in meeting the next challenge.

The fourth challenge is to review existing projects along different verticals such as solar-thermal, solar-PV, hybrid-solar and solar-wind. These reviews will reveal the strengths, weaknesses, gaps and also the potential for pooling different ideas within a vertical or across domain specific verticals for exploiting full potential.

The fifth challenge is to motivate students to take up the unsolved problems of MSMEs as well as the informal sector. For instance, development of devices for manual paddy transplantation or picking tea leaves so as to reduce the drudgery, improve the efficiency and thus the wages of millions of women who do this in a painstaking manner.

The sixth challenge is to facilitate a conversion of ideas and innovations into enterprises either through open innovation model or through intellectual property (IP) protection. The funds for both the purposes are scanty if at all. One can easily aim for at least 2,000 patents from each technical university every year. That will transform the stagnancy and sluggishness in the patent filing rates of Indians in India. One should think of either a utility patent system similar to the Australian model or what we have called INSTAR. The idea is to provide quick registration, short term protection, maximum five claims and low fees. If the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) can file several hundred patents for school or college dropouts with very limited resources, there is no reason why technology students cannot do it. It is true that most of them lose interest in their projects after passing out, but society has to have interest in their projects.

The seventh challenge is to get ready to make India the crucible of creativity for the whole world. Unlike the low-tech IT outsourcing business, in future platforms like techpedia.in would enable high-tech outsourcing with the distributed management of knowledge and ideas with high degree of redundancy. Imagine the cost of assigning the same problem or different modules of the same problem to hundreds and thousands of students. The competition and collaboration among the students will generate not only new solutions but many more new heuristics which will spawn further ideas and innovations. This model of collaborative and competitive problem-solving will achieve results at an extremely low cost which is unimaginable in the current costing structure. The frugal, affordable, accessible and accountable innovations will emerge from the mind-fields of technical universities, colleges and labs in small towns as well as bigger metros.

The eighth challenge is to forge close partnerships between tens of thousands of innovations and traditional knowledge practices in the NIF/Honey Bee database and the technological youth. By offering attractive awards, prizes, risk capital, stakes and other incentives, the whole eco-system can be made vibrant and at the same time joyfully collegial and inclusive.

The ninth challenge is to link the strategic sectors of Indian economy with this platform and challenge the youth to submit synopses for breakthrough ideas and innovations. With a planned failure of 90 percent, the success of the remaining will inevitably follow. We must accept that one of the greatest tragedies of modern India is not challenging the youth and other institutions intensively enough. The rhetoric of India being a young country with practically no engagement of the policymakers with the technology and management youth shows the farce of the current polity.

The tenth challenge is to develop both empathetic and inverted innovation models. The first implies developing solutions by internalising the pain of others as one’s own, as reflected in the eternal ethos of our society, namely, samvedana. The second implies a case where schoolchildren will ideate, college students will fabricate and the entrepreneurs and companies will commercialise or diffuse solutions socially as open source. This is an inverted innovation model which has already been operationalised by NIF through IGNITE competitions.

The Indian innovation eco-system is waiting to move vigorously, a small nudge here and a small prick there will make elephant dance and donkeys give way.