In the year 2018, the Ministry of Education (MoE), through MoE’s Innovation Cell (MIC) launched the Institution’s Innovation Council (IIC) program in collaboration with AICTE for Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) to systematically foster the culture of innovation and start-up ecosystem in educational institutions. Primarily, IICs’ role is to engage a large number of faculty, students, and staff in various innovation and entrepreneurship-related activities such as ideation, problem-solving, Proof of Concept development, Design Thinking, IPR, project handling, and management at the Pre-incubation/Incubation stage, etc., so that the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem gets established and stabilized in HEIs. The IIC model is designed to address the existing challenges/issues in HEIs, such as smaller numbers, occasional and unplanned Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) activities organised in HEIs with low involvement of top leadership, lack of coherence, and absence of synergy in resource mobilization, deployment, and underutilization of creative potential of youths as a major barrier for a vibrant I&E ecosystem to emerge from HEIs.

Major Focus:-

• To create a vibrant local innovation ecosystem.
• Start-up supporting mechanism in HEIs.
• Prepare the institute for the Atal Ranking of institutions on the innovation achievements framework.
• Establish a function ecosystem for scouting ideas and pre-incubation of ideas.
• Develop better cognitive ability among students.

Function of IIC:-

• To conduct various Innovation, IPR, and entrepreneurship-related activities prescribed by MIC in a time-bound fashion.
• Identify and reward innovations and share success stories.
• Organize periodic workshops/ seminars/ interactions with entrepreneurs, investors, professionals, and create a mentor pool for student innovators.
• Network with peers and national entrepreneurship development organizations.
• Create an Institution’s Innovation portal to highlight innovative projects carried out by the institution’s faculty and students.
• Organize Hackathons, idea competitions, mini-challenges, etc., with the involvement of industries.

Major activities of IIC:-

Apart from the regular calendar activities, IIC has four major activities to enhance the productivity and quality of innovation and entrepreneurial activity among the institutions.
They are:

• Innovation Ambassador Program.
• Impact Lecture Session.
• Innovation Contest.
• Mentor-Mentee Program.