Universities should embrace innovation in big way: Andhra CM

New Delhi: Underlining the importance of innovations, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandra Babu Naidu on Thursday said the country`s education system should move ahead of traditional ways and embrace innovation.

"The world has moved towards innovation, things are changing fast. What was useful yesterday will be redundant tomorrow. The goal of education is to create individuals capable of doing new things. The need is to move ahead of traditional ways and embrace innovation," said Naidu addressing the 12th Ficci Higher Education Summit here. 

Pointing to India`s "immense" demographic dividend, Naidu said it was imperative that the country`s human resource is capable of making innovations. 

"Schools and universities must have innovation as a subject. The need is also to translate research work into action. Most of the research works in our universities are for publication, we need to move ahead of that and translate that into useful innovations," he said.

The Chief Minister also called for universities having incubation centres. 

"Today technology and the internet of things (IoT) have brought a revolution across the world. Our education system must embrace technology in a big way and also should ensure that ideas and research are not just for papers. 

"All our universities should have incubation centres so that new ideas and innovations can be tested, nurtured and ultimately used for development," he said. 

Talking about Andhra Pradesh, Naidu said the government was in the process of setting up a university dedicated to research on water resources and another to research on energy. 

"We are committed to capacity-building, we are steadily moving towards making Andhra Pradesh the No.1 state in the country in terms of teacher-students ratio," added Naidu.