Institution's Innovation Council- An Initiative of Ministry of HRD

Ministry of Education (MoE), Govt. of India has established 'MoE's Innovation Cell (MIC)' to systematically foster the culture of Innovation among all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The primary mandate of MIC is to encourage, inspire and nurture young students by supporting them to work with new ideas and transform them into prototypes while they are informative years.

MIC has envisioned encouraging creation of 'Institution's Innovation Council (IICs) across selected HEIs. A network of IICs are established to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the Institution through multitudinous modes leading to an innovation promotion ecosystem in the campuses. MIC has established Institution's Innovation Council in more than 2200 Institutions till November 2020.

Major Focus

• To create a vibrant local innovation ecosystem.
• Start-up supporting mechanism in HEIs.
• Prepare institute for Atal Ranking of institutions on innovation achievements framework.
• Establish function ecosystem for scouting ideas and pre-incubation of ideas.
• Develop better cognitive ability among students.

Function of IIC

• To conduct various Innovation, IPR and entrepreneurship-related activities prescribed by MIC in time bound fashion.
• Identify and reward innovations and share success stories.
• Organize periodic workshops/ seminars/ interactions with entrepreneurs, investors, professionals and create a mentor pool for student innovators.
• Network with peers and national entrepreneurship development organizations.
• Create an Institution's Innovation portal to highlight innovative projects carried out by institution's faculty and students.
• Organize Hackathons, idea competition, mini-challenges etc. with the involvement of industries.
• Start-up supporting mechanism in HEIs.
• Prepare institute for Atal Ranking of institutions on innovation achievements framework.
• Establish function ecosystem for scouting ideas and pre-incubation of ideas.
• Develop better cognitive ability among students.

Features

IIC is a unique initiative of MHRD Innovation Cell and is different from other existing models, It aims at streamlining and strengthening the Innovation and startup ecosystem in HEIs campuses in the following ways:

• Breaking isolation and enhancing coherence and synergy among departments, centers, units, student bodies at the institute. It derives experts and resources from different departments and ecosystem enablers from outside the institute in a planned manner to promote and support innovation and startup programs on campus. IIC being a faculty-expert-student council, also comprises of representatives from institute, industry, alumni, financial institutes, incubation unit and intend to give guidance and directional support to council and student team to achieve the desired result by deriving support and expertise from member organizations and facilitating resource mobilization.
• IIC ensures to overcome seasonality nature of functioning of EDC and other centers and ensures round the year activities in the campus to give exposure & multiple opportunities for students and faculties to take part and understand the importance of Innovation, inculcating entrepreneurship skill and mindset and encouraging taking startup as an alternative career option.
• To engage key stakeholders (Student, Faculty, and Institute) effectively and developing healthy competition among IICs to carry out round the year activities in synchronization with other similar bodies such as incubation units and pre-incubation centers –start-up cell and IEDC units, etc. IIC portal is built with monitoring, evaluation and reward system by capturing the efforts being carried out at IIC/institute level.

Connect/Refer: This mode may be adopted to channelize the benefits of programs by various agencies. IIC can network with other IICs to carry out programs related to Innovation and entrepreneurship.