Over the past decade, I have had the opportunity to work closely with universities, innovation programs, startups, corporates, and public institutions – including building and scaling large innovation ecosystems like NASSCOM 10000 Startups and T-Hub. One insight that has remained consistent across these experiences is that institutions genuinely want to support entrepreneurship and innovation, but many are still searching for the most effective way to translate intent into measurable outcomes.
Across India, significant investment has already gone into building incubation infrastructure. Today, the country hosts more than 1100 incubators across academic, government, and industry-led institutions.
Public initiatives like SISFS alone have approved over Rs 945 crorein support of 215+ incubators, while several central and state programs provide up to Rs 10 crore in funding for individual incubation centers to build facilities and operational capacity.
These investments signal a strong institutional commitment. However, ecosystem data presents a more nuanced picture. According to the joint report titled ‘India Incubator Kaleidoscope 2024’ by NSRCEL (the startup incubator at IIM Bangalore) and the Centre for Research on Start-ups and Risk Financing (CREST) at IIT Madras, despite the expanding infrastructure, only about 8.2% of startups in India go through structured incubation.
Moreover, nearly 98% of incubated startups are supported by just 10% of incubators, highlighting a significant imbalance in performance and utilisation. The challenge, therefore, is no longer the lack of facilities but the uneven depth of engagement and the limited connectivity within the ecosystem.
If we look at universities such as Stanford or MIT, the difference becomes clear. Their strength lies not in the buildings they operate, but in the systems they have built over decades.
Entrepreneurship is embedded into coursework, research labs, industry collaborations, alumni engagement, and investment networks. Students encounter venture-building through multiple touchpoints – academic projects, commercialization pathways, competitions, faculty mentorship, and early access to industry problem statements.
The institution does not simply provide a workspace; it creates coordinated pathways that connect talent, ideas, markets, and capital.
During my participation in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) by the US Dept of State, including engagements with institutions such as the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, I observed a similar approach at a different scale.
What stood out was not the size of facilities but the intentional integration between academia, local industry, civic institutions, and investor communities.
Students were regularly exposed to real-world challenges, mentorship was accessible, and collaboration across stakeholders was structured rather than incidental. Outcomes were measured in solutions piloted, ventures launched, and partnerships created – not in the number of centers established.
These experiences reinforced an important insight – innovation ecosystems grow through networks, not infrastructure alone.
In several emerging ecosystems, including parts of India, innovation initiatives are still frequently evaluated using input-heavy metrics – such as the number of events conducted, workshops organised, participants trained or attended, or startups onboarded into a program.
While these indicators help track activity levels, they do not necessarily reflect real impact. An ecosystem can be extremely busy and still produce limited outcomes if the underlying systems-mentorship depth, industry access, early customer opportunities, commercialization support, and investor connectivity – are not strong enough.
My experience working with large innovation platforms has repeatedly shown that meaningful outcomes come from sustained engagement.
Startups require multi-stage support spanning idea validation, product development, pilot deployments, early customer acquisition, regulatory navigation, and scale. When initiatives are designed primarily around short-duration programs or event-led engagement, the ecosystem remains active but does not compound in impact.
Another area where a significant opportunity exists is industry participation. Corporates often engage academic institutions through placements, guest lectures, or periodic collaborations.
A stronger model involves structured problem statements, pilot opportunities for early-stage ventures, and early adoption partnerships. When institutions and industry begin to work together in this way, innovation moves closer to real market relevance much earlier in the journey.
As ecosystems mature, another realization begins to take shape – individual institutions, startups, corporates, investors, and regional innovation programs often operate in parallel, even when each of them is actively pursuing the same goal.
The challenge is no longer the absence of initiatives – it is the absence of mechanisms that connect them into a functioning system. When coordinated collaboration platforms and structured partnership mechanisms link academic talent with industry demand, startups with early customers, and innovation programs with market access, the overall ecosystem begins to move faster and produce stronger outcomes.
The intention across academic institutions to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation is clearly growing, and that is an encouraging development. The next phase of evolution lies in shifting the conversation from “How many facilities have we created?” to “How many real-world outcomes are emerging from the system?” This includes ventures reaching paying customers, research translating into deployable technologies, startups entering industry pilots, and alumni networks actively mentoring and investing back into campus ecosystems.
Infrastructure will always remain an important enabler. But buildings, by themselves, do not create innovation ecosystems. People, networks, industry linkages, faculty engagement, alumni participation, and sustained institutional commitment do.
Institutions that focus on building these bridges – between ideas and markets, students and mentors, research and commercialization – will find that the physical spaces they create naturally become vibrant. Those who focus only on the physical layer may discover that activity exists, but impact remains limited.
As academic institutions continue to expand their role in shaping future economies, the shift from measuring activity to measuring outcomes – and from creating isolated facilities to enabling connected innovation networks – may well become the defining factor that separates symbolic initiatives from those that genuinely transform ideas into enterprises.
Article by Vijay Bawra, Innovation and Startup Ecosystem Expert who has contributed to building large-scale startup, incubation, and market-access initiatives across academic and industry ecosystems. Ex -T-Hub and NASSCOM 10,000 Startups
