At a time when ‘innovation’ determines the success of businesses worldwide, the United Nations and a host of Asian universities are prefixing ‘grassroots’ to the terminology. Very soon, the same may be done in India as well.

At present, UNESCO is developing a course on ‘Grassroots Innovation Management’ with Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) — the country’s largest open university, which has approximately 2.5 million students.

The first course on managing grassroots innovations has already been completed. Lectures were beamed through satellite to 20 universities in developing economies across Asia. The 11 lectures of last year’s course — delivered by professors from different universities (in Western Sydney, the Philippines and Indonesia’s Bogor Agricultural University) and top leaders from the Ahmedabad-based National Innovation Foundation (NIF) — were conducted through interactive audio-visual conference.

The topper of the course, Indonesian entrepreneur Iqbal Djawad, was also invited to NIF's 5th National Awards ceremony at New Delhi last November.

UNESCO's maiden course was a sub-project of the “Comprehensive Approach to Strengthening Science and Technology Literacy in Asia” funded by the Japan Fund-in-Trust.

The free course not only provided examples of various grassroots innovations, but also included lessons on how to scout for such innovations, document them, file patents on the innovators’ behalf, and sell them after developing the technologies further.

Initiated at a meeting between UNESCO and NIF officials in Jakarta in September 2008, the e-learning course was largely coordinated by Linda Santiago Posadas, Program Specialist for Basic Sciences at the UNESCO Jakarta Office.