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.