IIM-J Srinagar Off-Campus organises Innovators’ Meet

27 August 2021

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Srinagar, Aug 27: Indian Institute of Management Jammu (IIM-J), Srinagar Off-campus organised an Innovators’ Meet at their Nowgam campus here.

The program was organized in association with Grassroots Innovations and Agumemtation Network (GIAN), Gujarat. The program was attended by more than 20 innovators from different parts of the valley, who shared their experiences and challenges in a session that was also attended by scholars, researchers and faculty members from institutes like Harvard University, Zhejiang University, NIT Srinagar, IIM Jammu, GIAN and Kashmir University.

IIM Jammu started its off-campus in the Srinagar recently and the campus is setup with an aim of broad outreach and a focus on corporate training, innovations and Entrepreneurship in the Kashmir region.

The objective of this in-house discussion was to facilitate the bottom-up narrative about local innovations. The structural and institutional challenges peripheral innovators face while scaling up their innovations were identified and documented. To nurture local innovations both from the formal and informal settings, it was agreed that a robust actor – sector collaboration will be forged.

In his welcome and concluding address, Chairman IIM Jammu’s Srinagar Off-campus Dr Muqbil Burhan assured the innovation stakeholders of the valley that IIM Jammu will offer a strong platform for local innovations, traditional industries and outstanding traditional knowledge holders and play an important role in creating an ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in the region. Further, he said that IIM has set up an Entrepreneurship and Innovation Centre at Srinagar and Jammu campuses with the sole objective of nurturing innovation and startups. The center has also setup a business incubator with the name “ThinkIN” for startups and is going to be functional this year with a first batch of incubatees.

Dr Sheikh Fayaz Ahmad, who is currently working as an innovation researcher at Zhejiang University China, also spoke on the occasion and stressed on understanding the bottom-up narrative from innovators which is must for crafting any innovation policy. Referring to the innovation policy history, he said that the top-down policy directionality has not helped local innovations. The local narrative about innovations is always wanting. For building a robust innovation system in Kashmir he mentioned that innovators perspectives are very important.

Dr Shabir Hassan, research scientist at Harvard Medical School while congratulating local innovations, IIM Jammu and Gian spoke about the importance of organising discussions and discourses on value-based innovations and entrepreneurship for nurturing innovation culture in Kashmir. He agreed to work with the local innovations for further value addition and scaling up. Appreciating the idea of creating innovation clubs, he suggested that local innovation stops should be set up in local universities and enterprises.

Syed Nadeem, Gian coordinator, referred to local success stories documented by his organisation from last ten years. He said that local innovations fail to create meaningful impact precisely because of institutional hurdles. Creating pro-innovation institutions and right incentives he believed would usher an innovation culture in Kashmir.

The meet was also attended by Prof Saad from NIT Srinagar who gave his valuable suggestion to the innovators and suggested collaboration supporting a better ecosystem for innovations in the valley. Various successful Entrepreneurs from the valley like Sheikh Iqbal (Founder, Tashawur), Ufair Aejaz (CEO & Founder KMTTI), Abdul Hamid Bhat (CEO Raheem Greens) also attended the event and interacted with the innovators on the occasions.