To take university research to entrepreneurial levels of technological innovation,the British High Commission in collaboration with scientists from the Venture Centre of the National Chemical Laboratory,Pune and AcceleratorIndia,sare organising a UK-India workshop series,the first part of which will begin here in Pune from September 27. AcceleratorIndia is an international business-building company that helps fast track business expansion of technology companies in the Indian and European market. The Accelerated Commercialisation of Technology and Innovation (ACTIV) workshop,will train entrepreneurs,scientists and in the later stages,members from small and medium enterprises from across the nation,with each batch having 30 participants. Uday Phadke,director,AcceleratorIndia,said,Most of the scientists who are attending the workshop are senior researchers who have shown some inclination towards innovation in the form of having at Indian and US patents to their credit. We will help them in areas like in the identification of a entrepreneurial opportunity in an academic research project,even while they are still being carried out at the laboratory level. Among the major challenges that workshop will address includes matching technology with market needs,understanding the shape the journey will take,and also including people from commercial sectors to make the whole arrangement work. Shailendra Vyakarnam,director,Cambridge Judge Business School said,Academics are not used to the vocabulary of the capitalist arrangement. They are used to getting paid for writing papers. They have not been a part of the culture of paying the money back. It needs a lot of effort for them to get used to the idea of venture capital and giving up the ownership of their own work after a company takes up the its manufacture. This kind of a workshop will help in such transition. The workshop will also try to help the system adapt to the Indian scenario,and talk more about the existing ecosystem like the recent government regulation that allows scientists working with public laboratories to start companies of their own.
