Innovation, the word which is highly fascinating has originated from R&D and is linked to the creation of new products, production techniques and commercial exploitations of ideas. With rapid and sweeping change in the global economy, there is need for innovation cluster. Innovation cluster usually facilitate the sharing of ideas, knowledge and expertise. These are developed around university campuses, educational institutions of national importance and play an important role in providing research inputs from professors, fresh talents and brilliant researchers. In the 21st century, we need to steer the fresh young minds towards innovation who are fresh entrants in a University or Institute.
Clearly the matter of imparting quality education that seeks to empower students to ask the right questions, to develop the right insights and to apply the learning efficiently, is a matter that will define the future of our country. We need a thinking generation who can innovate now. From there, the next step would be to use these thoughts and new ideas in the right direction in creating new avenues, encouraging innovation and making sure that the present generation can handle uncertainty and change.
The development of any country depends on its technological progress and to a large extent, the ability to innovate with technology. Education and knowledge play a key role in driving innovation offering everything from research to technological development. In the present scenario, it is well known that there is a huge gap between the needs of the industry and the community. From the industry point of view, only 20 to 25 percent of students are employable. The most important parameter, the innovative skill, is severely lacking in many of the students pursuing their education. There might be technical skills but the innovative skills are missing and thus companies do not come forward to absorb such students.
In this situation, it is essential that encouragement for industry-academia innovative research programme be promoted to bridge the gap between out of box initiators and skill enhancement sectors. It is assumed that such collaboration can jointly do wonders to develop innovators as well as indigenous technologies, especially for industrial exploitations and consequently bring opportunities for students to get their place in industries as well as in corporate sectors. Well to believe, a successful research programme at an institution provides several opportunities in building up innovators. New technologies and ideas generated through such innovators may be indigenously exploited for community purposes and thus we may produce future technopreneurs for society and nation.
When we look ahead the academic excellence, it becomes imperative to state that invention can not happen without a meaningful R&D programme. In this pursuit, the wider academic and industrial participation for identifying relevant research areas will evolve an effective and efficient mechanism for disseminating research outputs to the society. It is encouraging to know that in recent days, enormous focus have been drawn to address a number of pressing concerns of the Science and Technology (S&T) Mission in our country.
In offshore countries, academic institutions have their own research centres to execute joint research projects with industries. These academic institutions have separate R&D wing, which takes care of solutions towards the research based problems relevant to industries and societies. In India, the last few decades have seen tremendous progress in hi-end R&D activities. IISc, IITs, Central Universities have established R&D centres and promoted the research programmes in various faculties and departments. This depicts that the hitherto believed old concept of running an academic institution in India without a well defined R&D mission is a complete misnomer. These institutions have also academic and research collaborations with foreign universities. At this juncture, it is evident that success in academic excellence can be achieved with focus on cutting edge research along with joint R&D programme with other leading institutions and industries of the world. Thus the need for innovators, inventions and technopreneurs is urgent for our country and it is high time for our nation to have home grown technologies for its development. We need to develop such young minds who have intrinsic lust for new ideas and creations.
