NEW DELHI: India, being a young country, is a goldmine of ideas. With technology changing the world scenario exponentially, we need to look at things differently to grow along with it. Here, innovation plays a very important role.

JK Lakshmipat University (JKLU) understands the value of innovation and strives to promote it in every way possible. The JKLU Innovation Challenge is an initiative to help uncover the potential of our school students.

JK Lakshmipat University has launched the JKLU Innovation Challenge, a competition that encourages the school students with different ideas to think in the wake of problem solving and innovation. The challenge is open to the students of classes XI and XII of schools around India to think and bring about innovative ideas to change the world we live in. The JKLU Innovation Challenge is themed at “Finding solutions for tomorrow, today”.

The participants must provide innovative solutions to achieve for the any one or more of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the United Nations Development Programme for the year 2030, to make a difference at the world, national, state, city or community level.

The format of the competition is such that students, guided by their teachers and mentors, will describe, conceptualize, and build on an innovative idea in selected areas of social importance. Students can further give shape to their ideas through prototyping and by demonstrate them.

After being sieved through an eminent jury from organizations such as Amazon, McKinsey, Johnson & Johnson, Indian School of Business and many more, the best teams will get awarded with prizes worth Rs. 5 Lacs. Along with this, the enthusiastic participants get to attend workshops on problem-solving and innovative 21st-century technologies. Since JKLU believes in bringing ideas to life with its hands-on approach, participants can get incubated JKLU’s Incubation Centre.

The University intends this Challenge to also be a platform to bring to life several ideas and innovation that will transcend this initiative and may well lead to social and commercial start-ups spurring community-benefitting entrepreneurship.

At JKLU, we believe that anything, which improves or finds a better way of doing things is an innovation. If the solution makes it easier, faster, better, more sustainable or reduces the resources required for achieving the same result, it is an innovation. It may also involve finding a new useful application for something that already exists; a new useful service that utilizes an already available technique or resource, a modification in a product to enhance its use or even a new business model.

The University believes that the process of shaping well rounded problem solvers needs to begin at the schools – that is how we will change the mindset to an application-based curriculum. “Our country today needs a new generation of individuals who can efficiently play a key role in moving the development forward, and JKLU has ideally placed the innovation challenge to do this”, shared Dr. RL Raina, Vice Chancellor of JKLU and Former Dean of IIM Lucknow.