Institution’s Innovation Council (IIC)

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 education institutions. Primarily, IICs’ role is to engage 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 Pre-incubation/Incubation stage, etc., so that 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 less 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 major barrier for vibrant I&E ecosystem to emerge from HEIs.

IIC model is unique and distinct as it integrates the functionalities of flexibility calendar activities, scoring and reward system, decentralizing operation with division of work, progress monitoring and incentive mechanisms in coordinated manner through a robust digital platform. In last two years, undoubtedly, IIC has emerged as a very sustainable and scalable model for promoting innovation within HEIs and the efforts of these IIC Institutes can be seen as impactful contribution towards making country’s innovation and start-ups ecosystem more vibrant and dynamic. The recent achievement of India’s 48th positon in Global Innovation Index (GII) ranking is a reflection of the same.

Institution's Innovation Council (IIC): This is a program launched by the Ministry of Education (MoE) in India to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs). IICs work to create a vibrant innovation ecosystem within colleges and universities, encouraging students to develop creative ideas and entrepreneurial skills.

Members of IIC:

IIC Activities

ARIIA

NEP 2020

National Innovation and Start-up Policy

The ‘National Innovation and Start-up Policy 2019 for students and faculty in HEIs was launched by Former Minister of Education, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ on 11th September 2019 at AICTE, New Delhi.

This policy intends to guide HEIs for promoting students’ driven innovations & start-ups and to engage the students and faculty in innovation and start up activities in campus. The policy aims at enabling HEIs to build, streamline and strengthen the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem in campus and will be instrumental in leveraging the potential of student’s creative problem solving and entrepreneurial mind-set, and promoting a strong intra and inter institutional partnerships with ecosystem enablers and different stakeholders at regional, national and international level. The policy is being implemented by MoE’s Innovation Cell and in coordination AICTE, UGC, state/ UT governments and universities. Implementation of policy has been undertaken for quick adoption by HEIs. The present policy is a way forward to the earlier version of AICTE’s Start-up Policy which was launched in the year 2016 to complement the Startup Action Plan under the Startup India and Stand-up India Program launched by Hon’ble Prime Minster of India.