Monday, Aug 23, 2010
Chennai: The Rs. 300-crore Research Park developed at the IIT-Madras as an institute-industry partnership to promote research and development (R&D) is likely to be opened in October, IIT-M Director M. S. Ananth said on Sunday.

Addressing the opening of the “ASES India Regional Summit 2010” (Asia Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society) co-hosted by IIT-M and Financial Software Systems (FSS), Prof. Ananth said the Research Park, located on a 11.5 acre site, aimed to evolve a knowledge and innovation ecosystem through institute-industry synergy and “bringing unlike minds togetherThe park has allocated 85 per cent of space for industrial houses that engage in R&D with the IIT-M and the remaining portion for start-ups, he said. Noting that industry-University interaction often provided a reality check on education, Prof. Ananth said the idea was to have a combination of faculty that was advanced in theoretical knowledge, industry expertise that could take an idea and convert it into a marketable proposition and students with the spirit to conquer the world. Prof. Ananth wanted students to give serious thought to the concept of intellectual property, what ownership of knowledge was and the unfairness in one who articulated a discovery taking precedence over the actual inventor.

In a marketplace where one needed IPR protection to safeguard oneself from being exploited, Prof. Ananth stressed the importance of “being comfortable with the ethics of what you are doing.”

Nagaraj Mylandla, Managing Director, FSS, said a successful business was seldom an overnight phenomenon and involved hard work and perseverance. Providing constant value-addition to customers is important and so is timely investment for growth. Ashwin Mahalingam, advisory faculty for IIT-M's Cell for Technology Innovation, Development and Entrepreneurship Support (C-TIDES), said the summit featured lectures as well as site visits, and provided a networking platform.