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Science & Innovation Policy: Entrepreneurship

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Nongovernmental organisations

Displaying 1-4 of 4 links

Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN)

This organisation was set up in 1997 to foster grassroots innovation and traditional knowledge across India. It helps innovators develop and commercialise their ideas, and provides a network to support their activities through technical and business advice.

Divided into geographical regions, the website provides news and publications, a product inventory, business opportunities as well as information on project funding, careers and volunteering.

Lighting Africa

Lighting Africa, an initiative of the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank, supports the private sector to develop and sustain markets for affordable, clean and efficient lighting and energy through off-grid technologies — including solar systems — in Sub-Saharan Africa. It provides information on business opportunities and projects, publishes news about its activities and links to relevant events.

Practical Action

Practical Action (formerly known as The Intermediate Technology Development Group) is a non-governmental organisation that specialises in promoting the development and use of technologies which address the needs of poor communities in developing countries. Practical Action works directly in four regions of the developing world – Latin America, East Africa, Southern Africa and South Asia and focuses on the development of appropriate technologies in food production, agroprocessing, energy, transport, small enterprise development, shelter, small-scale mining and disaster mitigation.

The Honey Bee Network

The Honey Bee Network brings together innovators, academics, policymakers, entrepreneurs and nongovernmental organisations to collect, document, and disseminate innovations and practices at the grassroots level. These range from traditional crops and agricultural techniques to machines that reduce labour inputs or costs.

The website provides access to an innovation database containing ideas, inventions and traditional knowledge practices; a newsletter published in seven Indian languages and English; and innovation competitions. Twice each year, members of the organisation participate in the Shodh Yatra journey in which they visit rural communities to identify and document examples of unrecognised local ingenuity.