Adviser to UT Administrator Parimal Rai on Saturday called upon the Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster (CRIKC) institutions to focus on imparting entrepreneurship skills to students and producing ‘job creators’.
Rai was interacting with the CRIKC institutions heads and representatives at Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), Sector 39, Chandigarh. Chairman CRIKC and Panjab University Vice Chancellor Arun Kumar Grover, amongst others were present on the occasion.
The meeting was planned to give an overview of CRIKC activities at Chandigarh region. As many as 27 members attended the meeting representing several institutions.
Earlier in the meeting, the PU Vice Chancellor outlined that knowledge CRIKC represents a Cluster of Chandigarh Region Institutions to Promote & Sustain
Excellence in Research. CRIKC would endeavour to foster and sustain close academic alliances between institutions of higher education and research in the Chandigarh region, to facilitate innovation and knowledge creation and for achieving excellence in all academic spheres without compromising in any manner the autonomy of the participating institutions.
Rai referred to the triangle of ‘Academia, Industry and Financial institutions’ to support the innovative ideas of new entrepreneurs. He emphasized to create Chandigarh region as a knowledge hub and a soft city. He emphasised on translational scientific research in the institutions with the industry participation.
Referring to the Smart City campaign of Chandigarh City, the Adviser specially asked CRIKC institutes to come up with a specific plan to create incubation centres.
These centers will bring awareness among the researchers about the venture capital availability. He assured the complete support from UT administration to encourage this activity. The three ways of taking idea to the market were discussed during the meeting. In the first approach, the researcher becomes an entrepreneur and in the
second industry seeks help from the researcher. Rai encouraged the third option, a marriage between researcher and entrepreneur at the early stage to address the need of the current society.
Rai mentioned the role of UT administration to take ideas from the CRIKC
institutes collectively, individually or partially collectively to the market to increase the overall job opportunities. The financial risk factors were pointed out as the main reason for the failure of several innovative projects and the help from Government to support such projects was discussed by the researchers.