(GIST OF KURUKSHETRA) Promoting a Culture of innovation and Entrepreneurship

[May-2021]

Promoting a Culture of innovation and Entrepreneurship

Context:

Science and technology plays a pivotal role in the development of a nation, be it economic, social, or overall development.
India has been steadily rising in the Global Innovation Index (GII) rankings and was ranked at 48th position in 2020 from 52nd position in 2019.
The power of the 3rd largest scientific and technical manpower in the world has many Multi National Companies like Samsung, Bosch, Microsoft, CISCO, etc. have started focusing on India to leverage the capability we have to offer.
India is the youngest country in 2020, with 64 percent of the population in the working-age group.
This provides a huge opportunity for the young, ambitious, and increasingly educated youth to become job creators rather than being job seekers.

Internet of Things:

The Internet of Things (IoT) links cutting edge sensor technologies to conventional industries - from facilitating precision farming to water treatment and maintenance, climate change control, forecasting and disaster management, driverless cars and spacecraft.
Big data and analysis as well as artificial intelligence enable electronic commerce and complex decisions thanks to advanced and user-friendly tools. All these technologies are accessible today and are affordable, unless our children in the schools have access to and become familiar with these technologies, tinker with, experiment with, design solutions, create prototypes test them and let their imagination and creativity express themselves without restraint; we will all be far behind.
The Indian government has already actively identified the problems and is implementing the appropriate reforms.
The results are visible in the ranking of India to facilitate business. In recent decades, the focus has been on math, science, technology and innovation. India’s science and technology sector will benefit from the following
factors:
The increase in income leads to an increased consumption of suction products.
The increasing affordability of Indian SMEs is likely to be a key driver of demand for high-end technology products.

Changing Trends and Challenges:

Rapidly Evolving Ecosystem: Demands of all the ecosystem stakeholders are now rapidly changing, and nowadays they all want high growth and quick adaptability to customer changing requirements which commonly results in acquisitions and restructuring.
Focus on Futuristic Deep Techs – Corporates and startups have started facing a hard time acquiring customers that can give them high economic returns by minor modifications/incremental innovations. Hence, to derive high value, their focus has been shifted towards next-gen technologies like genetic engineering, IoT, 5G, quantum computing, etc.
Digitisation and Democratisation of Information: As more and more users have started using digital technologies, a huge volume of data are being generated. Now, organisations need to deal with increasing data, maintaining transparency and dissemination of information through their value chain network.
Requirement for Specialised Manpower: As the world is progressing exponentially in the field of science and technology, the requirement of the workforce is shifting from having unskilled labour to someone specialised in nextgen technologies. There is an acute shortage of people having the desired skill set. Also, their desires are different, and most of them do not want to be employed, rather would want to establish their startup.

Impact of Changing Trends in the field of Science and Technology

Business: Business leaders have started understanding the changing environment and started challenging their assumptions to innovate relentlessly and continuously. Many companies have introduced new technologies trying to fulfil existing and unserved demands by disrupting across the complete product value chain.
Government: Government and regulators have also started to be up-to-dated with changing environment and trying to understand what they are regulating to attain a worldwide competitive position. For doing this, governments and organisations should also start to work with the end-users, i.e., businesses and civil society.
People: With the increasing use of technology by the business, some fundamental issues on data privacy have started to key in how the data is used by them, and this is forecasted to get intensified in the coming times. Similarly, biotechnology and artificial intelligence revolution are being considered to push current thresholds of life span, health and other cognitive capabilities, which in turn is forcing to redefine moral and ethical boundaries.

Important Aspects for Attaining Success

Adaptive mindset: The world is currently flooded with unreliable untested ideas/solutions and they are unlikely to make it to market unless adaptive mindset approach is used to bridge the gap between customers real demands and supply of feasible solutions.
Being digital: Startups must make full use of data, design and digital presence to keep ahead with changing global trends, thus creating business value.
Building corporate relationship and strategic partnership: Building corporate relationships is an important step for organizations, to achieve visionary results, which may seem to be impossible to achieve single handedly.
Being Flexible and agile: Flexible organisms works as machines, they are made up of multiple components working independently to achieve a particular goal. Similarly internal teams having end to end accountability, work in autonomous manner and take decisions in a rapid manner.
These teams should incorporate agile development practices. Model elements should be developed with the final design, such as scrum and test-and-learn, design thinking.

Atal Innovation Mission:

The Atal Innovation Mission has adopted a holistic framework that can create immediate impact and others that are necessary for the long term.
There are a growing number of startups in India thanks to the several startup initiatives in the country both from the private sector as well as the government - but there is a greater growing need for new greenfield incubators across the various fine academic and other institutions of the country to provide the necessary support system in many ways to startups to enable their success - from access to technology labs, mentoring networks, to access to venture capital, financial, hiring networks, etc.
There is also a need to support scaling of existing proven Incubators. With 100 smart cities been identified in the country, we need to ensure thriving vibrant incubators in all these smart cities.

Brief on activities being carried out under Atal Innovation Mission:

1. Atal Tinkering Labs (aTL) - at School Level:

Over the last 3 years AIM has launched the establishment of thousands of Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) enabling students from grade 6 to grade 12 to have access to and tinker with innovative tools and technologies like 3D printers, robotics, miniaturised electronics, do it yourself kits; thus stimulating a problem-solving innovative mindset to solve problems in around the community they are in.
Atal Tinkering Labs are being established in schools nationwide with 7000+ operational in 660+ districts and over 2.5 million students having access to ATLs. 112 out of 115 Aspirational Districts have ATL coverage. AIM has launched a first of its kind Artificial Intelligence Do-It-Yourself learning module in a partnership with Nasscom and several key industry partners of NASSCOM.

2. Atal Incubators – at Universities, Institutions, Industry level

To promote creation of a supporting ecosystem for start-ups and entrepreneurs, AIM has been establishing world class incubators called Atal Incubation Centres (AICs) in universities.
Institutions, corporate, etc that would foster world class innovative start-ups and become scalable and sustainable enterprises.
To date AIM has selected close to 70 universities /institutions/private players to establish world class incubators, each of which will foster creation and nurturing of 50 world class Startups every four years.
The AIM, till date, has supported 2000+ operational Startups, 625+ women-led startups, creating new jobs across the length and breadth of the country.

3. Atal Community Innovation Centres – Serving Unserved and Under-Served Regions/Communities of India:

To promote the benefits of technology led innovation to the unserved/underserved regions of India including Tier 2, Tier 3 cities, aspirational districts, tribal, hilly and coastal areas, AIM is setting up Atal Community Innovation Centres with a unique partnership driven model wherein AIM would grant up to Rs. 2.5 crores to an ACIC subject to a partner proving equal or greater matching funding.
Over 25 ACICs are currently being established across the country and 50+ ACICs will be established during the next two years.

4. Atal New India Challenges (ANIC)–Stimulating Product and Service Innovations with National Impact:

To create product and service innovations having national socio-economic impact, AIM has launched over 24 Atal New India Challenges in partnership with five different ministries and departments of central government. 52 winners have been selected for grant aid and hand holding by Incubators / mentors of AIM.

5. Applied Research and Innovation for Small Enterprises (ARISE)-to stimulate MSME industry innovation:

To promote innovation in a phased manner in the MSME/Start-up sector, AIM has launched 15 ARISE (Applied Research and Innovation for Small Enterprises) Challenges along with five partnering Ministries including Indian Satellite Research organization, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Ministry of Food Processing Industries and Ministry of Health. This will enable great early stage applied research innovations to be converted to viable innovative prototypes followed by product development and commercial deployment.

6. Mentorship and Partnerships – collaborating with Public, Private sector, NGOs, Academia, Institutions

Over the last five years India has jumped over 33 places from rank 81 to rank 48 in the Global Innovation Index rankings index. Atal Innovation Mission initiatives are key to further promoting the culture of innovation and giving expression to the innovative and entrepreneurial ideas of startups to enable development of one of the most Innovative Nations of the world.

Conclusion:

To summarise, India did get left behind in the industrial revolution that swept the world in the last century. But India does have a fantastic chance to contribute to the world in the knowledge-based revolution that is sweeping the world today.
That is why AIM initiatives are so important and need to be embraced by all. The children and youth of the future deserve it to realise the Vision of a New India by 2022. We all need to make it happen collectively.