Setting up local chapter of National Innovation Club
To harness the creative potential of youth, each Diploma college under DTE , Karnataka
may form a team of students and faculty members to set up a National Innovation Club.
The club will coordinate all the local activities related to innovation at college level. A
vibrant knowledge Network has to be created across sectors and space in the state of
Karnataka. Primarily the clubs will pursue four functions: [a] search, [b] spread, [c]
sense and [d] celebrate creativity and innovation in the region. Colleges under DTE,
Karnataka will implement such an innovation model comprising its students and faculty
members across the state that almost every student will be inspired to do something
new. Each National Innovation Club at diploma college level will adopt and adapt these
guidelines and execute in their college. In case innovation clubs want to take up
additional activities, they should feel free to do so. They can take up value addition in
local ideas, test some of the innovations, modify the design or cover the whole value
chain of Innovation including student based entrepreneurship. The club may also extend
its efforts and include activities like skill development and other complementary
activities. Some colleges may have already industry-institute cell or support system for
innovation/design/entrepreneurship and similar activities. These teams and
coordinators of the ongoing activities which already exist within the college can also be
taken into the Innovation team so that they can contribute meaningfully for the goals of
these clubs.
DTE , Karnataka will issue a notification to all diploma colleges to set up these
innovation clubs by 16th May 2013.
General Guidelines for setting up National Innovation Club at Every diploma college:
1) Each club will have an executive committee (EC) mentored or guided by a faculty
member/s.
2) The Executive Committee will have students of various branches/batches as
members.
3) Faculty members: As far as possible, each branch will have one faculty member in the
advisory Committee.
4) Student members: Ideally, there should be one student from each branch and batch
i.e. from diploma in mechanical engineering, there will be three students from each
batch or year, first, second and third year. The nominated students should be active
in related activities and not necessarily based on their academic performance. Idea is
to promote their innovative thinking and leadership skills.
5) Industry members/external members: Principal /Director of the college may
nominate some active local industry members, innovators, entrepreneurs, grassroots
innovators, policymakers or representative of organisations related to innovation,
entrepreneurship, and industry chamber as a member of the advisory club.
The members of the executive committee at a college will be nominated by the
Principal/Director of the College. The Training and Placement Officer of the College, faculty
from industry-institute interaction cell, alumni cell or similar authority from college
associated with innovation/R&D may be a member of the Club. The Principal/ Director will
be the patron of the Club. The coordinator of the innovation club will execute all the
activities in consultation with various stakeholders and play crucial role not only in the club
but also in entire innovation framework at DTE, Karnataka.
Activities of Club
The list of the Club members is to be sent to the concerned authority at DTE. To
coordinate these activities of the club, each diploma college is required to publish the
list along with their contact detail at their own website. DTE, Karnataka will also publish
the name/contact detail of each coordinator of innovation club in all the affiliated
diploma colleges. This will help forge lateral linkages between Innovation Clubs and
industry clusters, social organizations, communities, public systems and within various
innovation clubs too. The best practices of each innovation club along with
activities/achievements may be published on the web link of the club in each diploma
college. DTE may design a separate web section on its website where the activities and
other things may be highlighted from all clubs so that others will know and try to
contextually replicate the best ones. The clubs may help each other, share resource and
creating complementary strength amongst the nearby innovation clubs of the colleges.
All diploma colleges may not have all resources and support systems. These clubs will
create a horizontal support network so that each team of students gets adequate help at
their diploma colleges right from problem/project identification to take it further, if
possible till the final user. DTE, Karnataka will create a forum virtually on its web
platform where all these innovation club coordinators across the state will share ideas
and create possibility of huge co-creation for designing better innovation policy and
execute them locally.
• Each student club member will remain as a point of contact for the respective
department/batch and sense the unmet needs of the whole branch/batch and
take it up for discussion within the club for suitable action. These may vary from
locating an appropriate MSME, getting IPR support, design and fabrication need,
mentoring support or other similar activities.
• The club members will meet every month formally to gauge the progress and
create strategies to improve ideas consistently and develop further agenda. The
reports/findings/need gaps and others achievements are to be posted on the
college web page of the club for lateral learning and finding opportunity.
• The club will create connections between innovations, innovators, MSMEs,
challenges, knowledge networks, related public institutions to provide the best
opportunity to every final year student doing innovative projects.
• The club will coordinate the capacity building workshops /seminars/innovator
interactions/innovation exhibitions at the college level and report to DTE.
• The student members of the club can contribute to the process as alumni after
they pass out of the college so that the respective club will gain from their
experience in supporting innovation related activities.
• Each club will host group meetings with nearby innovation clubs periodically to
share their learning. They may invite nearby clubs to share their success,
challenges so that faster support systems can be created.
• Principal/Director of the college and the coordinator of the club can re
nominate/change members if needed and take a look at the progress periodically
to take suitable measures.
• An annual report/analysis of innovation related activities and learning can be
made and shared with every stakeholder of the college and also with the DTE .
• DTE, Karnataka will arrange capacity building workshops for the Innovation Club
coordinators and principals periodically to share various strategies, process,
efforts, policies and lateral learning frameworks so that continuous improvement
can be done in the activities at the club level. Later on such efforts can be
extended to the student coordinators too at the zonal/local level coordinated by
a group of clubs supported by the DTE. These will give opportunity to learn for
the central policy makers too and blend the contextual innovation protocols for
improving efficiency at DTE level.
National Innovation Clubs
During the current decade of innovation, Hon’ble President, Shri. Pranabh Mukherjee
has exhorted the academia to set up National Innovation Clubs in every university and
college. These clubs will promote inclusive innovations by linking the creativity in
formal and informal sector. Primarily, the clubs will aim at four functions: [a] search, [b]
spread, [c] sense and [d] celebrate.
Search:
Unless young students go out into the field, villages, urban workshops, slums and other
MSME clusters to find out innovations by common people as well as others, they would
not know the creative potential that already exists in our country. They can mobilise
ideas from school children, college students, roadside mechanics, farmers, artisans,
homemakers and others for solving various problems or improving the quality of life
through incremental innovations. Every time a hidden innovation is brought to surface,
many more people feel encouraged and may start trying to solve problems through their
own genius. If every college and university starts mapping creativity in its hinterland,
the whole society will bristle with positive energy and unleash tremendous dynamism
in the economy.
The innovations in different fields such as technology, education, institutions, public
services, private enterprises, cultural creativity, governance at different levels, etc., will
be documented first in a synoptic way and then detailed documentation will be taken up
of the more significant ideas. In different courses, these ideas and their documentation
can be incorporated as a part of curriculum. The social, cultural, ecological, industrial
and institutional connect are extremely important for overcoming possible alienation of
people in certain areas.
Spread:
Diffusion of existing innovations whether sourced from Honey Bee Network and
National Innovation Foundation [NIF] or other depositories have to be shared with the
local communities in a systematic manner through various creative pedagogies and
performances. In fact, searching innovations without sharing may neither appear very
credible nor even ethical. In the process of sharing, the students and faculty will
themselves become aware of how creative our country is and how limited is the support
extended to these people/communities by the formal sector including academia. Such a
realization will do more to trigger introspection and generate empathetic culture for
blending ideas from formal and informal sector. The students can organize exhibitions,
have street theatre performances or follow other means of creating awareness about
innovations in the nearby villages, schools, communities, clusters of industry,
government departments, etc.
Sense:
There are a lot of problems in our society which have remained unsolved for long.
Unless we benchmark the persistent problems and try to address them within the
means available, we may develop an attitude of living with them indefinitely. Such an
attitude will never let our society progress in the long term. Idea here is that students
from different discipline should benchmark unsolved problems or challenges in
different sectors, at various scales affecting numerous social groups. In technology
institutions, third year students can go to both MSME clusters and units and informal
rural and urban sector and benchmark the problems to be addressed. They can be given
credit for identifying the problem and writing a synopsis on it. In the final year, they can
take up projects to address these problems in one or two terms. Accordingly, they can
get credit for that too. Practical examples of such a process are given at
www.techpedia.in. The innovative solutions can be given prizes at university level and
also at national level through competitions like Gandhian Young Technological Awards
[techpedia.in/award]. In social sciences, one can identify gender and other cultural
problems and address them likewise through action research approach. Language
related students can help improve the linguistic skills of school children and develop
innovative pedagogies. If every student develops one lesson for any one topic and for
any class, a huge repository of open source local language lessons for school children
can be developed to overcome the asymmetry in access to basic education. Different
challenges can be sensed and responded.
Celebrate:
During the interactions with different social and institutional segments, a lot of
outstanding achievers will be identified in the hinterland. There may be an outstanding
doctor who may have contributed in a big way for making the communities almost
disease free or a teacher who has created a very rich learning environment in a school
or an innovator who has solved a problem or a public or private functionary who has
created public goods for larger social development. There may also be outstanding
artists, writers or other change agents who need to be invited in the universities to
inspire students and create an insatiable desire to excel and serve society.
National Innovation Clubs can be coordinated by the students under the oversight of
empathetic faculty members. Students should have as much flexibility and freedom as
possible. They should organize interactions with the innovators in different fields and
try to add value where possible, help in diffusion, create markets, provide linkages with
other innovators and stakeholders and forge a knowledge network around innovations.
They should not remain restricted only with local innovations. They should also
mobilise ideas from outside for local development and vice versa. If a few sessions can
be organized in different courses to rigorously analyse the heuristics, triggers,
motivations, outcomes and ecosystem characteristics, more and more students may feel
encouraged to take risk and try new ideas.
NIF will support the value chain development in the case of innovations from informal
sector and by school children. The mandate of NIF is restricted to support ideas,
innovations and outstanding traditional knowledge practices from the unorganized
sector by individuals or communities who have not received any professional training or
support. The educational, cultural, institutional and other governance related
innovations will be pooled by Society for Research and Initiatives for Technologies and
Institutions [sristi.org] and linked to various other programmes. In due course, support
may be mobilised to give traction to these ideas. At present, the major contribution will
be to give voice and visibility to the innovative ideas in various sectors.
Volunteers from among faculty, staff and students will hopefully join hands with the
innovators at different levels and in different sectors to ensure widest application for
creative and compassionate ideas. Collaborative culture is likely to emerge when
learning across formal and informal boundaries gets reinforced.
