TePP Outreach cum Cluster Innovation Centre (TOCIC)

Room # BA 125, First Floor, Institute Main Building
CSIR-Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute
Mahatma Gandhi Avenue, Durgapur 713209, West Bengal
Phone: 0343-6510232; E-mail: tuc_cmeri [at] cmeri [dot] res [dot] in

India is a developing country with an enormous potential of emerging as a knowledge leader in the global scenario. The role of innovation in this context therefore can not be overemphasized, and the Department of Scientific & Industrial Research, Government of India (DSIR) is perfectly justified in reaching out to tap the resource pool of innovation in the country through programmes like the PRISM. Though a major component is devoted to the small and medium enterprises constituting a major plank in the Indian economy, the programme also realizes that development should lead not only to new products and technologies, but also to new approaches to improving the livelihoods of rural poor.

As a result, in the development realm there is no such thing as a purely technological innovation, as each innovation entails enabling changes at social, institutional and policy levels. Innovation is needed both to develop new practices and technologies, in order to address rural poverty, and to facilitate an empowering institutional and policy environment for innovation.  

The cooperation in innovation between firms in the manufacturing and service sectors, research institutions and government sponsored promotional agencies continues to grow in importance in this emerging paradigm of innovation-catalysed business success and economic growth. Innovation management is also considered to be a major instrument to increase the innovation capacity of small and medium-sized companies (SME).  

The goal of the strategy to popularize PRISM is to ensure that innovation is systematically and effectively mainstreamed in processes and in its practice in region and cluster specific programmes. And as an outreach component of the overall programme, the purpose of this strategy is to enhance TOCIC-CMERI'S capacity to work with partners to find and promote new and better products, novel and innovative services and unique ways to enable the rural poor to overcome poverty.  

TOCIC-CMERI relies on a promotion strategy intrinsically incremental in nature, that builds on current efforts, and focuses on elements of people, processes, environment and outcomes - that require specific attention. To strengthen its innovative capabilities and become a better catalyst of high technology and society-induced innovation, TOCIC-CMERI proposes to focus on four clusters of activities as under:

• Building capabilities and understanding of challenges requiring innovation
• Nurturing partnerships and facilitating an innovation network
• Embedding rigorous innovation processes and the related risk management into the core practices
• Facilitating a more supportive organizational environment for innovation

Projected output/outcome/deliverables

• A strengthened learning in region-specific, sector-specific and country-specific programmes and in regional and thematic networks
• Development of a better knowledge management infrastructure
• Fostering partnerships, and promoting a supportive organizational culture
• Effective knowledge management and innovation at the individual, industrial and cluster levels facilitating replication and scaling up of innovation
• Popularization of PRISM through disseminating knowledge of innovations
• Evolution of thematic and regional networks and knowledge-sharing partnerships

• Continued participation in MSME Cluster Level technology promotion initiatives

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