Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM C) has signed an MOU with the Government of West Bengal in 2013 to partner with the Department of Micro & Small Scale Enterprises and Textiles (MSSE&T), to embark on ‘Shilpa Abhijan’- a movement to foster district level entrepreneurship in West Bengal.
IIMC is a knowledge partner to this initiative of the State Government. IIM Calcutta are instrumental to ensure that this movement ultimately results in creating an entrepreneurial culture in the state leading to setting up of a significant number of quality entrepreneurs across the whole state over the next few years.
Over 2013-14 and 2014-15, IIM Calcutta has designed and delivered a series of capacity Building training programmes for Directors, General Managers, Managers and Industrial Development Officers (IDOs) of the WB MSSET department and DIC officials to train and orient them towards creating a more supportive ecosystem for district level existing and prospective entrepreneurs. The purpose of this set of programmes was to provide essential knowledge and skills to these officials to enable their transition from regulators to supportive facilitators of entrepreneurship in the districts of West Bengal. Further, they intended to change the mindset of these officials form a bureaucratic set up managing government schemes to a more proactive and positive paradigm of facilitating business development. They included two rounds of training workshops for the Directors, General Managers, Managers and one round of training workshops for all IDOs across the state. These training and capacity building programmes received a very positive response from the participants.
Furthermore IIM Calcutta has conducted the following activities for the state governments:
To aid the department of MSSE&T in drawing and developing the industry map of West Bengal IIMC has conducted “Market Scoping” studies in four districts of West Bengal as a pilot project:
The study would help in identifying the building blocks that would eventually usher in entrepreneurship growth and economic development in the state.
To help create a knowledge base for entrepreneurship development in West Bengal, IIM Calcutta will develop case studies on successful entrepreneurship in West Bengal. Each case will be able to showcase the challenges these chosen entrepreneurs have faced, the support they have received and how they have emerged as successful entrepreneurs at the state/national/regional level.
With the success and positive feedback received from the participants of the capacity building programmes in 2014, a specific feedback has been expressed to be better connected to the state headquarters and to each other through a continuous flow of information and communication regarding new developments, departmental plans, new initiatives etc.
The participants often felt disconnected from other districts and the state headquarters. The opportunity to meet and share learning’s during the capacity building workshops made them aware of the need and potential of communication playing a key role.
Having being the knowledge partner of the West Bengal government in the on going initiative of promoting and enabling district level entrepreneurship development, IIM Calcutta Innovations Park will create, manage and run a knowledge cum communication hub for the West Bengal MSSE&T department specifically to support its district level entrepreneurship developmental activities.