Achieve excellence through collaboration, institutes told

Anil Kumar Gupta urges NIT-K to mentor institutions in addressing societal needs through collaboration and innovation.

Former Executive Vice-Chair of the National Innovation Foundation and founder of Honey Bee Network Anil Kumar Gupta on Saturday urged the National Institute of Technology – Karnataka (NIT-K), Surathkal, to mentor other institutions in addressing societal needs.

Speaking at a workshop titled ‘Unleashing innovations - for and from the grassroots’ organised by the Institution Innovation Council (IIC) of the NIT-K, he stressed on achieving excellence through collaboration instead of competition. There should be open sharing of knowledge and innovations, he said.

Director of NIT-K B. Ravi asked the institutes to form a coalition to identify and solve local problems especially relating to health, agriculture and environment.

Anamika Dey, Director of GIAN (Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network), was the theme speaker. She spoke on co-incubation of start-ups at GIAN.

The workshop was meant to share the best practices to achieve collaborative excellence through inter-institutional innovations and co-creation with communities to sense their unmet needs as well as search, spread, and celebrate inclusive innovations, a release from NIT-K said.

The workshop was attended by more than 400 delegates from over 60 engineering institutions across Karnataka. It included office-bearers of innovation councils of various institutions. Many start-ups, entrepreneurs, and industry professionals also participated in the event.