X Prize- Jackpot for Innovation

The practice of posting rewards for invention goes back centuries, but the California-based X Prize Foundation upped the ante in 1996, when it offered the biggest such reward in history—$10 million—for the first successful private space flight. Today the foundation is developing prizes of up to $30 million for solutions to outsized challenges in space exploration, life sciences, energy, the environment, education, and social entrepreneurship. Read interview with X Prize CEO Pater H Daimandis in HBR. Future X prizes include Village Utility X prize to develop/ diffuse technology based innovations for improved ways to deliver water, power, connectivity to rural areas.

The March Madness for the Mind

The March Madness for the Mind Exhibition is a celebration of student E-Team innovation and entrepreneurship. Each year, top E-Teams (collaborating groups of college students, faculty and industry mentors) showcase their work in a science or technology museum during NCIIA's annual meeting, many unveiling their cutting-edge innovations to the public for the first time. Business Week carried a slide presentation of the finalists, many of them focused on developing country markets.

HYBRID RDBMS for Mine Safety

Jayaseelan, who worked as Senior Director at FICCI started his entrepreneurial journey by developing applications using HRDMS architecture. The first application, Indian Mines Safety Information System (IMSIS) is now fully operational at DGMS connecting coal mines located at Dhanbad, Sitrampur, Ranchi, Koderma, Bhubaneshwar, Nagpur, Jabalpur, Bilaspur and Hyderabad. Read full story at Dataquest.

Open Courseware in MOT

Business Schools and other institutions offering courses in subjects like Management of Technology, Innovation Management can use Open Course ware offered by Indian Innovators Association. For an overview see:
http://www.indianinnovatorsforum.org/e-learning.htm

India Innovation Initiative

India Innovation Initiative or “i3 is joint initiative of Agilent, DST & CI.

i3 aims to create an innovation eco-system in the country by sensitizing, encouraging and promoting innovators and facilitating the commercialization of the innovations. Entries for innovation based projects are invited from all innovators in India, above 18 years of age. Topic for the year 2009 is “Technology Innovation for Masses and Global Impacts”.The last date for sending the entries is 30th April 2009

Renewable Energy Search

Renewable Energy Search is an endeavor by CIIE (IIM Ahmedabad) and MNRE (Government of India) to identify, encourage and incubate entrepreneurial ideas aimed at solving the energy crisis through use of existing clean energy related research. Support is available for Start-ups, Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR) and for Innovators. For details: http://www.re-search.in/

GE Edison 2008 winners

The GE Edison challenge had attracted over 350 entries from over 100 colleges. And 17 of the pre finalists made their presentations on November 6th culminating in the grand finale on the 7th of November where two teams were declared the winners and runners up.Vasuki Prasad, Rupan Sarkar, Rahul Sharma, Gaurav Barman and Pranab Purkayastha, from MIT, Manipal presented Train Informatics to emerge the winners of the first GE Edison Challenge and bagged Rs 5 lakhs.The runners-up, Jitendra Kumar, Vishal Garg and Manish Parmar from IIT Kharagpur were runners-up for self-cooling engines with Rs.2 lakh prize money.

Collaborative Innovations with Honeywell

HTSL supports collaborative innovation through knowledge based non-cash venturing. Support includes:

• providing mentorship and problem statemnets
• providing infrastructural support
• identifying potential applications
• supporting pilots in Honeywell areas of interest
• providing guidance to scale-up.

Innovators in following areas can contact Honeywell.

• energy & environment
• security & safety
• health care
• telematics
• smart materials
• building automation
• traffic management
• industrial automation
• agriculture
• water management
• remote mgmt of infrastructure

Contact:
Harsha Ramesh Angeri
Director-Strategy & Initiatives
Honeywell Technology Solutions Lb Pvt Ltd
harsha angeri at honeywell.com

TR 35-call for nomintions

Nominations invited for Technology Review 35 young technology ventures. Last date -31st March 2009.Established in 1999 as the TR100, the TR35 list recognizes 35 outstanding innovators under the age of 35 each year. The awards span a wide range of fields, including biotechnology, materials, computer hardware, energy, transportation, and the Internet.To view profiles of all past winners, please see Technology Review's website at www.technologyreview.com/tr35/.

iAccelerator

Applications accepted for 2009 edition of iAccelerator at IIM ,Ahmedabad. Last date is April 1st. It is an intensive start-up assistance program with campus training of 4 month from May 1st to Sept 1st.