how can India unleash its innovation and entrepreneurship potential? Well, the answer is many-fold according to me. One of the most important steps that we need to take is to nurture intimate collaboration between the industry and academia, specially for urban, high-skilled entrepreneurship. I have experienced this myself here at CMI. This place is excellent in terms of the quality of education; in some aspects, even better than many of the IITs. We have high-quality intense Math and Computer Science courses and learn a lot. But when it comes to interaction with the 'real world' out there, I feel a short-coming. One such rare opportunity came by this year, when a start-up '4am' (
4am Design and Technology Labs) visited our campus. It was the first direct interaction we had with industry people without having to go and work there necessarily. And, although what was spoken was not strictly technical, there was a phenomenal exchange of ideas and views. It made us think, just the way we would think on a research problem. And from the discussions I've had with my friends in various institutes (including IITs etc.), I feel this is what is missing - the courage and passion to think outside the 'given set of rules'. These qualities should be consciously nurtured amongst youngsters. All students are pushed to do is to get good grades, build a solid CV etc. Of course, this is important, but we Indians tend to lose sight of other important concepts. Some good steps have been taken in this regard – like the entrepreneurship cell (
The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay ,
SINE : Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, IIT Bombay) at IIT Bombay. But these are sporadic reactions to the problem. This nurturing needs to happen everywhere across India. Companies should generously fund research projects undertaken in colleges, even if they are not directly related to their product profile. Colleges should develop alumni associations and encourage intense interaction between the alumni and present students. On one hand, alumni can share their wisdom, while on the other, the young people can pour in their enthusiastic ideas. For most of the ideas mentioned above, I can show you a school which is the perfect combination of academia and industry – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It's a place driven by entrepreneurs where academicians flourish. It is a partnership which has benefited both groups tremendously. As an example, consider this - (
http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/pulse/mit_inventions_breakthroughs/e...). It tells how students at MIT are allowed to even take a year off from their course and pursue an idea they have in their mind. This kind of flexibility is very rare in Indian institutes. It's only because of this culture that concepts like OpenCourseWare (
Free Online Course Materials | MIT OpenCourseWare) were born - a concept which has benefited the academic community to such an extent that it would be almost impossible to put a measure on it. We need to encourage angel investors and venture capitalists which in turn will encourage entrepreneurship. Programs like 'Power of Ideas' which Economic Times launched (
Home - The Power of Ideas - The Economic Times) recently need to get more affirmation and support.