Hyderabad, June 22 (KNN) Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University is all set to launch “J-Hub” a university wide Innovation and R&D initiative.  Starting this academic year the initiative is envisioned to inspire graduating engineers across colleges towards knowledge based innovation, tech product development and entrepreneurship.

An Industry Advisory Council is constituted with tech industry leaders, product initiative leaders, start-up enablers and research and innovation centres to guide the university in its R&D and Innovation strategy and directions.

During the kick-off meeting held on Thursday, the members of the council led a brainstorming session on structuring the model for innovation seeding programs and creating culture of building tech prototypes and product based start-ups.

The IAC recommended a hub-and-spoke model with innovation hubs in colleges and a central innovation-hub & R&D cell in the university campus.   Activities that trigger interest and excitement around innovation, hackathons to seed new product ideas, and then start-up boot-camps and workshops to actually take an idea off the ground are being planned with deeper enablement and mentoring provided centrally in the university central innovation hub.  Further, R&D efforts will be strengthened with alignment and connection with industry needs and guidance, and a downstream technology transfer office.  

Speaking on the occasion the Vice-Chancellor of the University Prof. A.Venugopal Reddy has said “The initiative shall be implemented in two levels. Institutions shall start local  i-cells to seed  innovation and create excitement around innovation to start with.”

“The university shall through its industry partners structures the enablement of these activities. The i-cells shall mature into innovation/incubation units at the institution level thru regular workshops on ideation, design thinking and hackathons and innovation showcases. The university shall provide innovation and incubation support in a pyramid structure and create a university wide framework to link to industry, tech product leaders and startups,” he said.

The tech prototypes from the institutions shall be provided more focussed training to about 6 months to graduate into startup in the university accelerator. This year we have about 30 colleges ready to start i-cells and more than ten to showcase innovation products. Ten products will undergo training in the accelerator starting this July, Reddy added.

The Members of the Advisory Council are –

By Manne Srinivas Rao