1) Techpedia.in, at SRISTI   is linking 502 colleges ( engineering, polytech,pharma,MBA,MCA etc.) with 166 industry clusters (MSMEs) in collaboration with Gujarat Technical University (GTU) to create innovation zones which will be known as ‘Innovation Sankuls’. These innovation zones will facilitate close interaction and cooperation between the industries, technical youths and faculties. The idea is to create a platform where industries can pose real life problems which would then be solved by students as a part of their academic course. This will enrich the learning process of students, inculcate entrepreneurship and provide industry with solutions to their problems. The process has been carried out by Techpedia.in before and it has been observed that such a platform often brings forth low cost, innovative solutions. 

2) This attempt  aims to turn the  students and teachers, laboratories and workshops, its class-rooms, open spaces and libraries into an eco system of innovation through the ‘Navsarjan Sankuls’. GTU and Techpedia are collaborating to build capacities to implement the model aiming to socialise technologies.

3) To facilitate the process it is improving the evaluation process being followed at the colleges. It has proposed to award 6 credits in a semester for two consecutive semesters. Two credits would be awarded to student for identifying an industry problem (Industry defined problem) and four credits for coming up with a solution to that problem. The capacity of each Sankul will be built by involving faculty members, professionals, students and owners of industries as stakeholders in the process. It will encourage stakeholders in each Sankul to develop a program of activities through joint efforts. At the end of a year, the activities/program will be reviewed. Both students and faculty members will work jointly with industries to determine the Industry Defined Problems (IDP).These may relate to improving the quality of the products  or process to innovate  new products/process.500 innovation clubs have been created  at all colleges to further democratise the innovation ecosystem. The socio-technical issues of 5of most back ward districts are being scouted and addressed via technical youths.

4)Navsarjan Sankul will explore opportunities to improve access, affordability, sustainability, productivity and competitiveness in the needy domain of socio-technical applications and with a key focus on Bottom of Pyramid segment (BOP).  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 mindfields of technical universities, colleges and labs in small towns as well as bigger metros.

Some key figures:

No. of Navsarjan Sankuls                                              20

Number of students involved                                  250,000

Disciplines:                                                          Engg., Pharmacy, MBA, Polytechnics, ITIs, MCA

No. of faculties to be linked to SMEs for a week along with  students: 10,000

No of SMEs to be directly linked to students :                 34,500

No. of Innovation Cells to be installed in academic domain:          502

A group of 6-7 students from multiple disciplines along with a core faculty will be linked to a particular SME for a year

5)Phase I of the project will involve 37000 graduate and 1900 post graduate engineers, 41,800 Diploma engineers, 6800 B. Pharma, 1900 M. Pharma, 12000 MBA graduates and 4900 MCA graduates. Each zone will on average involve 5000 students from 11 engg., 12 MBA, 5 Pharmacy, and 8 MCA colleges working with 3000 SMEs for a year.

6) Techpedia.in will provide an online real time platform where database of IDPs, past projects and current work in progress, summary of work at each innovation zone will be maintained. The platform will help students to select projects from IDP database, review past progress on the problem by other students and progress ahead from that point. Techpedia.in    is deploying a relay model to avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ problem and encourage original work. Local customization of previous solutions along with new solution will be encouraged. The best solutions will be nurtured for techno-entrepreneurship modules for wider socio-technical needs.

7) Expert mentors from Industry, academia and other platforms are being put together at NMN (National Mentoring Network) at www.techpedia.in to fill the need of quality mentors who will help the thousands of students and faculties to conceptualise their ideas to prototypes and then products or solutions. It makes it very difficult for a student to do what has already been done. By putting all the research works by students and faculties together at www.techpedia.in  ,the innovation quotient thus has gone up and so has the originality quotient.  All Industry Defined Projects (IDPs) and socio-technical problems, grassroots innovations will be scouted an drawn from Honey Bee Network  and processed via Techpedia.in promoted by SRISTI to put together in a public domain an  open innovation platform a to harvest need based technical evolution.

8) To create an user defined progressive knowledge ecosystem industrial Shodh Yatras are being organised involving 1 lac technical youth and 20,000 faculties to map four aspects of technology – in – use 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, to identify 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 realizing fully the entrepreneurial potential.   Need based attempts are being taken to identify the existing projects (1.04 lac projects done by 3.5 lac students in 500 colleges across the country posted at Techpedia ) which as such or by pooling several projects can solve the existing problems in socio-technical domains.

9) 456 Crores were the expenses in techno management fests in India in technical colleges in a single year in 2010 but not  even few solutions for socio-technical needs was derived from these for BOP via collective efforts. Hence Techpedia had arranged 12 such focused attempts in last 45 days in 6 states with Techpedia coordinators with specific theme of frugal innovations, and come across significant progress. It is integrating 50 such attempts in coming months in creating dynamic stages to address the locally relevant socio-technical issues in high degree of quality and innovation. This process is mainly focusing in addressing the century old socio-technical local issues of the country at very bottom level of society too.

10) The above attempts of Techpedia.in will cut through the inertia of non-contact and will develop a new model of Industry-Institute Collaboration, based on innovation at the grass roots level. When in three years, every one of  each university’s more than 100,000 final year students and more than 20,000 faculty members are out in the field with the requirement that an innovative Final Year project is to be completed and put on the Techpedia based on efforts of  15 million human months of efforts every year  while pursuing projects , when there will be no way to hide the work, when good work will be awarded year after year, when thousands of small and big industries get the opportunity of thinking, jointly with young minds and faculty members about continuous improvements in their products & processes and when the law students work to make patent process and IPR processes easy, an entirely new environment of innovations will be created.

N.B. Many more state technical universities like RTU Rajasthan, RGPV Madhya Pradesh, VTU Karnataka, and PTU Punjab are now coming up in replicating the attempts made by Sristi and Techpedia. Techpedia is coordinating all efforts by sristi’s own resources till now.