CII ties-up with CFEL to facilitate innovation

London, Oct 10: The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) today signed an agreememnt with the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (CEL), Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, under its National Manufacturing Innovation Mission.

Through this mission, CII intends to put the Indian industry into a 'drive' mode for innovation. ''The thrust is on driving innovation for inclusive and sustainable growth and relating it to the consumer's expectations,'' CII President R Seshasayee said here.

CII's alliance with East of England International, a high-tech cluster with Cambridge, was focused at developing a model for linking small entrepreneurs and individual innovators by linking academia, research and development institutions, businesses as well as the government to facilitate innovations in the SME sector in India, he added.

With the help of CFEL, CII's proposed National Innovation Grid would provide innovators with continuous access to outside domain knowledge and the infrastructure besides making available the requisite multiple domain expertise for successful commercialisation.

Under this mission, CII intends to initially catalyse transformation amongst 100 companies from select sectors in the first year, going on to 500 companies over next three years, a CII statement said.

To start with the focus will be on machine tool industry, automobiles and auto-components, electrical equipment, chemicals and leather, it added.

A critical element of the grid will be the Innovation Services Link, aimed at kicking off innovation services such as making available services for rapid prototyping, fabrications, machining centres, tool rooms, and testing centres.

The links will provide basic instruction and lead to sources for details. The Global Innovation Node will link to the Cambridge system for innovation and provide an access for the Indian network to access its' services for CII Innovation Grid members.

The website will also link members to registered Innovation centres of corporate members of the chambers' innovation mission.

UNI