Contributed By: Dr. Sachin Modgil (Ph.D.), IMI KolkataThe economic position of a country defines the status and aspirations of its people. It is well known fact that India is the country of young people and hence nurturing them in the early stages of school can help develop a generation of problem-solvers and innovators. Schools and Colleges are the nodal points of embedding the entrepreneurial intent among students.In schools, the focus should be on developing curiosity and critical thinking skills are the base for innovation and entrepreneurship. Schools can encourage students to run small ventures that can generate an interest in business concepts. The subject like mathematics can be used to create a budget for small businesses and to track the budget throughout a financial year. Many schools do have the provision of Tinkering Labs, where students can get their hands dirty to develop the idea to prototype. Also, workshops can be organized where students can participate in the development of a product or service.There is a lot of provision for both schools and colleges. There are ample government schemes towards entrepreneurship and innovation. For Instance, in 2019 National Innovation and Start-up Policy was established by AICTE to promote innovation-driven entrepreneurship and encourage faculty to take up startup activities. The government schemes like start-up India offer ready-made market research in different sectors, and Idea bank, where potential work can be done. They have also highlighted the concerned ministries where individuals can reach out to pitch their idea and secure funding. The platforms supported by Government of India also provide pro bono services such as cloud, enterprise resource planning, legal help, financial services, and business services. To boost the start-up infrastructure and support system there are multiple companies like ZOHO and AWS Activate that offer services. The Government of India is dedicated to developing a culture of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in India through different routes and ways. NITI Aayog is such an umbrella, where Atal Tinkering Labs and Atal Incubation Centers are part of it. They organize different hackathons from time to time and conduct entrepreneurship programs in vernacular languages. In a similar attempt, different Institutes and Universities in higher education have developed their own concepts to foster entrepreneurship and innovation among their graduates. For instance, we at International Management Institute, Kolkata have developed two unique and full credit practical courses namely Local Business Accelerator and New Venture Development, under the IKN Innovation Foundation, which is a Section 8 company established on campus. In the Local Business Accelerator Program, our students work with small scale businesses to develop and implement solutions in the space of challenges that they are facing in a span of six months. In the New Venture Development Program, the student team works on their idea and takes it to the minimum viable product stage and their students are exposed to venture capital and funding agencies to fund their ventures. Hence, there is a need to develop innovation and entrepreneurship landscape in this regard at the institutional/university level as well.
Published On Apr 2, 2025 at 12:14 PM IST
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