Students Club for Augmenting Innovations (SCAI)
Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network - North
Chief Innovation Manager
Science Park, Shastri Nagar
Vigyan Udyan Marg
Jaipur -302016
Tel No. 0141 330 4161
E-mail:- gian_n@gian.org
Background
Around fifteen years ago, the Honey Bee network (www.honeybee.org), started by Prof. Anil Gupta, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, triggered a movement to scout, spawn and sustain unaided creative and innovative urges in the unorganized sector of our society. As a logical extension of the activity, the Gujarat Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN) (www.gian.org) was set up in Ahmedabad, in 1997, with the objective of building a value chain around these innovations to take them to market. Subsequently, the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, set up the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) (www.nifindia.org) in the year 2000 under the chairpersonship of Dr R.A. Mashelkar, Secretary, DSIR and Director General, CSIR with the objective to scale up the GIAN model in other parts of the country and to make India an innovative society.
The Role of Educational Institutes
GIAN follows a "virtual incubator" model for incubating and scaling up grassroots innovations. GIAN as an organization has a lean staff structure and basic infrastructure facilities. The incubation support to the grassroots innovations is mobilized through the means of a strong and a highly motivated network. Educational institutes form a key constituent of this network given:
- a highly intellectual and creative atmosphere which is conducive for innovations and managing innovations related activities.
- high quality faculty and resources.
- a questioning attitude and spirit of learning.
- excellent geographical spread.
- highly energetic students who are willing to experiment and learn.
All of the above make educational institutes, especially those in the areas of management, engineering, agriculture and pharmacy, very natural constituents of the Honey Bee network.
About Students' Club for Augmenting Innovations (SCAI) at grassroots
The Students' Club for Augmenting Innovations (SCAI) (www.scai.org.in) at grassroots, is a body of students from India's best management technology and agriculture institutes. The club is expected to be a focal point for undertaking various activities related to incubation of grassroots innovations. Some of the activities that can be undertaken by the club are:
- Development of business plans of the various high potential and high impact innovations.
- Providing mentoring support and consulting services to innovators and entrepreneurs.
- Undertaking technology value addition and design improvement projects for specific innovations.
- Participation in the Annual "Disha" Business Plan competition held by NIF.
- Development of self-employment / entrepreneurial opportunities around the innovations being incubated by GIAN. Students willing to commercialize / scale up innovations from the GIAN portfolio can also be provided funding support through the Micro Venture Innovation Fund, a venture capital fund specially set up by SIDBI for incubating grassroots innovations.
Students institutionalizing SCAI in their respective institution would be required to devote quality time and efforts towards value addition to grassroots innovations and traditional knowledge existing in our country.
ScopeThe most significant outcome of SCAI would be that students from different business schools and technical institutes would come together for advancing the cause of grassroots innovators. This is an effort to link the informal knowledge system (grassroots genius) with formal knowledge system and thereby have a distributed knowledge system in place. Such an attempt would ensure the reach of economically poor but knowledge rich people to the masses and will also prevent the erosion of indigenous knowledge base. This is an unprecedented movement and has enormous potential to change the development paradigm.
Our aim is to cover the entire country so that physical barrier involved in reaching innovators and knowledge-holders does not remain a handicap. This would in turn enable us to form a distributed knowledge system/network.
Institutional FrameworkEach educational institution shall have a student coordinator and a faculty coordinator to start with. The student coordinator shall be given the right to select his/her core committee and build up a SCAI chapter for his/her institution. The members may be from the first year or the second year. The student coordinator upon his/her selection/election/nomination will be required to submit a detailed Statement of Purpose (SoP) enlisting his/her vision for SCAI, expected areas of activities/involvement, learning involved, expectations from GIAN, succession plans, skills of entrepreneurship exhibited in past, etc.
Possible Outcomes of SCAI Activities
Technical students can help the innovator with technical refinements in his innovation and the management students can help him develop a commercialization plan for his innovation. Students also have the opportunity to work on real life projects like prototype development, market research and enterprise development.
Students may take up projects keeping geographical proximity of the innovators' place to their institute as a selection criterion but the commercial/social diffusion of it can extend anywhere across the nation.
Thus, the students in their attempt to work for grassroots innovators will acquire proficiency in technological assessment, market feasibility, benchmarking, test marketing, preparing practical business plans, scouting for an entrepreneur, trying for licensing / technology transfer, franchising the technology to SHGs, etc.
Merits to SCAI teams
- The SCAI members would have the opportunity of developing business plans and providing mentoring support in a real life business situation.
- SCAI team members would get access to grassroots innovations and instances of traditional knowledge existing in remote and far-flung areas of the country. Specific areas of interest of students can be given special consideration while allocating projects.
- SCAI activities would be especially beneficial to students who are looking at entrepreneurship as a career option. In order to facilitate this, SCAI plans to organize SAAKAR - an event for scouting and supporting entrepreneurs. Herein students developing practical business plans would be provided venture capital to convert the innovation into a successful enterprise.
- SCAI coordinator for every chapter at the end of his/her tenure would be awarded a certificate of recognition for his services and efforts.
- Team members will have the opportunity to organize several workshops, seminars, etc. in which innovators, entrepreneurs, field collaborators could be invited to share their hands on experiences and provide insights to the students.
- SCAI teams will serve as our contact point for announcing DISHA- Annual Business Plan Competition- in their respective institution and inviting multiple teams from their institution to register for participation.
Issues to be Addressed
- Non-Disclosure Agreement: All students participating in any of the SCAI related activities would have to first sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA). It is only after this that projects can be assigned to the students.
- Succession issue: Every student coordinator on the completion of his tenure will have to hand over his responsibilities to another student from the junior batch. While doing so he has to keep in mind the characteristic traits to be possessed by a student coordinator. He should preferably hand over the role to a student who has been actively involved with SCAI activities round the year and thus will be able to resume his responsibilities better.
Expectations from SCAI teams
- Members of SCAI teams are expected to expand the network by involving mentors, volunteers, corporates, Non Government Organizations (NGOs), Not for Profit Organizations (NPOs), etc. Students directly contacting their seniors, alumni associations, faculty, professionals, etc can facilitate this. Such an effort will promote commercialization of grassroots technologies. (Please visit www.indiainnovates.com)
- Students taking up projects would meet the set deadlines as regards submission of projects with the expected deliverables.
- SCAI teams should help popularize the objective of NIF and involve as large a student community as possible. This could be done by word of mouth publicity, encouraging students to take up projects with NIF as volunteers, interns, etc....More Details