Center for Open Innovation launched

Center for Open Innovation : With focus on Smart Cities and entrepreneurship

Center for Open Innovation is launched at AU Campus by Hon’ble CM Sri Chandrababu Naidu on 10th January, 2016.

Garwood Centre for Corporate Innovation, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkley and the proposed Centre of Open Innovation, Andhra University would provide an ecosystem for collaborating with knowledge flows globally.

The following activities will be carried out through

1. Garwood Centre for Corporate Innovation, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkley
2. the Berkeley Innovation Forum with about 30 major companies and

• the planned Center for Open Innovation with focus on Smart Cities, Entrepreneurship and leadership development to be established at Andhra University

• Soft landing for global entrepreneurs into the State of AP. These may include start up exchange programs sponsored by MNEs, exposure to partners and investors in the parties’ respective countries.

• Corporate Innovation Centers and Corporate Accelerators. Exploration of the possibilities for developing joint programs between the institutions on lean corporate innovation and lean start-ups

• Consulting, advice to attract capital and build organization infrastructure in state departments.

• A semester long student course taught at UC Berkeley campus with State of AP projects as a focus to development of solutions for the state (example: smart cities projects)

• Research based global best practices and independent assessments that can be used for state’s development.

• A smart city challenge engaging students, makers, innovators, entrepreneurs and large corporations.

• Access to UC Berkeley students, faculty and access to top consultants of UC Berkeley in areas like, research and science parks set up etc.

• Other exchange and cooperation programs

In summary the Center for Open Innovation would help in

• Open Innovation for building smart cities: It is found that a bottom-up, collaborative, people driven, innovation model is better suited to drive technology advances towards smarter cities. Open Innovation would help in solving real world problems.

• Collaboration and business models: Collaboration with teachers and students who have studied the Smart Cities challenges in other parts of the world. This would also allow work on emerging economies.

• Hackathons: This would also enable the aspiring young minds to show case their ideas through Hackathons, nurture their ideas and bring about startups and eventually lead to incubators.

• Knowledge Exchange and Sharing: Professors from UC, Berkley, Stanford University would collaborate for research publications, research projects and training programs. This would enable the AP universities to improve their world rankings as high impact and collaborative academic and research have the highest points in ranking calculations.

• Not reinventing the wheel: Identifying and Enhancing the models used for existing smart cities and customising to suit Vizag environment and conditions.

• Networking Opportunities: The AP universities will be able to collaborate with 30 major companies in the Berkley Innovation Forum. Current members include a number of technology companies, such as Autodesk, Cisco, SAP and GE. But other sectors are also represented, through members like Dupont, Coca-Cola, Johnson and Johnson, UnitedHealthCare, and Standard Chartered Bank, consumer-oriented companies like Nestle, and Nike, as well as a number of international firms.