NIC to create $1 bn fund to spur innovation

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The National Innovation Council (NIC) plans to create a $1 billion fund to build an ecosystem for innovation for the benefit of the 20-odd local industrial clusters identified by the council in collaboration with industry chambers.

This was stated by Sam Pitroda, adviser to the Prime Minister on Public Information, Infrastructure and Innovations, while addressing the India R&D 2011 conference and exhibition on the theme ‘Industry-Academia Linkages’, organized by the FICCI and the Department of Science and Technology.

Pitroda said that the need of the hour is to create for each major industrial cluster local advisory cells in universities, earmark funds for scholarships to spur innovative minds and for university professors to undertake research.

“The way forward is to align local clusters with universities in their proximity and to enable universities to set up business incubators and R&D tool kits,” he said.

“Our research scientists must teach and our professors must do research,” Pitroda said. He added that in the absence of the right attitude towards solving the problems of the people at the local level, growth and development of the country would suffer.

Dr. R. Chidambaram, principal scientific adviser to the Government of India, underlined the need for a policy at the national level which enjoins government support to corporates which have human and technological resources to undertake research, over which the government has proprietary rights.

He suggested that while selecting students at college-level placement interviews, large industries should send the “creamy layer’ to do research with a university of repute. That is the long term investment that will pay dividends, he remarked.

Dr. Chidambaram stressed the need for introducing new technologies for the first time, if India wished become a knowledge-driven economy. “Proven technology” is “obsolete technology”, he declared.