Where functionality met form!

Under the National Innovation Grand Challenge, more than 20+ teams participated in the Design Day held in Islamabad. The teams were paired up with student designers and faculty from SADA, University of Gujrat and National College of Arts, Lahore. The purpose of Design Day was to assist teams in improving the outlook of their product, while maintaining the same level of functionality. Participants worked with their paired up designers to submit their ideas to win cash prizes worth PKR 50,000/-

Winners include:

Neelam Munir from University of Karachi

Awais Arshad from Islamabad University of Gujrat

Ilm Apps Challenge conducted in 2014, was an “Open Innovation Challenge” focused on creating ‘ilm applications’ to address Pakistan’s Education Emergency. Applicants were invited to create mobile and web-based applications focused on the goal of increasing outreach of education in an improved manner. The Ilm Apps Challenge included a series of eight workshops and three hackathons to produce polished products in the form of web-based and mobile applications that were awarded seed funding amounting to PKR 200 million.

Winners of the Ilm Apps Challenge of include:

Knowledge Platform

Arbisoft

MS-ITE (NUST)

Team Amal

Innovation Forum 2014 was conducted under the theme of “Innovation Nation™ – The Promise and Challenges of Creating an Innovation Ecosystem”. The event brought together notable champions from the academia, government and business together with emerging young innovators and entrepreneurs. The Innovation Forum addressed the challenges and opportunities of boosting innovation in the country by engaging all the relevant stakeholders. Here is the final report of “The Innovation Nation”. Click here to read the Report.

The Innovation Lab is a special initiative of PIF carried out with the sole purpose of finding novel solutions through faculty-student exchange, across universities in Pakistan. The Innovation Labs provide a conducive surrounding for creative solutions from the identification of the problem till the discovery of the solution through collaborative problem solving.

The PIF Innovation Labs are currently located in the following universities:

• University of Agriculture, Faisalabad
• PMAS Arid University, Rawalpindi
• University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences, Lahore
• CASE, Islamabad
• Karachi Institute of Technology & Entrepreneurship

One of the major parts of these innovation labs is the brainstorming exercise carried out by students and faculty to identify problems and create innovative solutions in Water, Climate, Information Sharing, Energy, Farmer Information System, Communication among others. The students were divided into the groups and given their desired field to deal with. The session was divided into two parts. First, students and faculty were told to focus on the main problems of their fields and then move towards solutions. In the process of that, some of the groups come up with very important problems as well as innovative and creative ideas to solve those problems.

PIF Ideas Lab is an initiative to aims to bring together professionals and students to brainstorm innovative ideas that addressed the Pakistani problems from a creative angle. The aim of the ideas lab is to find ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions while creating opportunities for industry-academia linkages, mentorship and knowledge sharing.

Under the PIF Ideas Lab, the Ideas Contest 2013 was conducted with a focus on solutions from the following key areas:

• Agriculture and Rural Development
• Manufacturing
• Water, Climate, and Disaster Mgmt.
• Better Governance
• Energy
• ICT for Development
• Urban Living

PIF received an overwhelming response for the Ideas Contest 2013, with participants submitting original, innovative yet realistic solutions to problems. The winners of the competition were awarded PKR 50,000 and runners up received PKR 25,000 in cash prize, coupled with lots of mentoring and training on how to refine ideas and practical advice on taking them forward from some of the leading innovators and entrepreneurs in Pakistan.

VISIONING PAKISTAN 2050

This online competition was conducted to commemorate the successful democratic transition of power in Pakistan in 2013 General Elections. Entries were invited in the form of photographs, design or visual artefacts that best revealed the artist’s vision of Pakistan in 2050. This online competition was conducted with the support from National Academy of Young Scientists (NAYS), Go Green Pakistan, Sha’oor Society and IdeasEvolved. We received an overwhelming number of positive, patriotic and inspiring visual material, that included pictures, photographs, paintings and designs that showcased the finesse, energy and patriotism of our youth. The winners received Gift Vouchers worth PKR 7500 and PKR 2500.

Short Listed Entries were posted on our Facebook page and can be viewed here Pakistan Innovation Foundation – PIF

Karachi (Pakistan), November 7, 2013: Indus Motor Company (IMC) and Pakistan Innovation Foundation (PIF) announced the launch of National Innovation Grand Challenge (NICG) 2013-14 here on Thursday. A year‐long ‘Open Innovation’ competition, NIGC encourages Pakistani Innovators, youth, students, professionals, entrepreneurs, and citizens to innovate for solving Pakistan’s development challenge in a variety of areas such as Agriculture, Energy, Rural Development, and Manufacturing.

The Challenge invites creative minds from all over Pakistan to come up with unique and innovative ideas in two critical domains. The first challenge is to develop a replicable, scalable and marketable product or process that enhances productivity, reduces energy requirement or reduces industrial waste by at least 33%. The second challenge is to develop an innovative product, service, or tool that complements or enhances the utility of a manufactured product and has a compelling market potential and cost-performance profile for rapid commercialization in Pakistan. The Winners shall bag Rs. 1,000,000 (1 Million) ‘Open Innovation’ Prize and Rs. 500,000 (0.5 Million) Dedicated Student Prize.

The announcement was made by the Senior Leadership PIF and Toyota Pakistan which is founding corporate member of the Foundation.

“The Corporate sector has a special role to play in innovation…many of them have systems and processes in place to drive innovation internally…so they can help us in driving innovation projects across Pakistan”, says Saad Amanullah Khan, who the Chairman of Pakistan Innovation Foundation and also the CEO of Gillette Pakistan.

The Toyota – Manufacturing Innovation Challenge 2013-14 is part of Pakistan Innovation Foundation’s National Innovation Grand Challenge (NIGC) – a year-long ‘Open Innovation’ Contest that encourages Pakistani Innovators – youth, students, professionals, entrepreneurs, and citizen innovators – to innovate to solve Pakistan’s development problems and competitiveness challenges.

Faisal Muneeb Khan, Senior General Manager HR, Administration and Corporate Social Responsibility, Indus Motor Company, said: “There is paramount need to grow our local industry and nurture human capital in order to develop our economy. Kaizen , or continuous search for a better way, is a way of life at IMC. By encouraging our employees to practice ‘Kaizen’, we are in effect encouraging them to innovate. We believe that our success and the success of Pakistan lies in finding much needed innovative solutions that are home grown. It’s time we looked inwards for answers.” “The National Innovation Grand Challenge provides a great opportunity to the talent available in Pakistan to come forward and showcase their creative ideas and bring them to life,” he added.

Patterned after the famous X-Prize and Grand Challenges in Health, Toyota Manufacturing Innovation Challenge builds upon Toyota’s stewardship of the manufacturing industry and the tremendous talent that Pakistan has within its youth and young professionals as demonstrated in competitions such as Shell Eco-Marathon, Microsoft Imagine Cup, and International Science Olympiads. Toyota has, in the past, encouraged and funded student teams to participate Shell Eco-Marathon and other similar contests where Pakistani youth have competed with passion and achieved excellence.

“Entrepreneurship has been a craze in Pakistan for a little while now. But entrepreneurship without innovation i.e. breakthrough ideas is very hard to do. We want to bring breakthrough ideas to traditionally conservative sections of Pakistani society. Pakistanis are immensely talented people but their talent often remains raw and undiscovered. I am certain that NIGC has the potential, in due time, to revolutionise Pakistan’s economy and its society,” says Dr. Athar Osama, the Chief Executive of the Pakistan Innovation Foundation.

The Competition is Open now and those seeking to compete can register on PIF’s website (https://pif.org.pk/NIGC-2013). The contestants shall go through a 10 month long process in three distinct stages of Design, Prototype, and Demonstration Phases that will end in July 2014. Contestants shall receive guidance, mentoring, and training throughout the process that will end in the announcement of finalists. The winners shall be announced in August 2014 at a National Conference and Innovation Showcase.