The ideas have germinated and if found worthy, it is time to translate it into projects. This will sustain livelihoods and reignite our economic engine. Ideas For Goa has done exactly this. To take it to the next level Forum for Innovation Incubation Research and Entrepreneurship (FiiRE) along with founder members will jointly take these ideas forward. Over 150 people contributed 350 unique ideas in just 25 days that generated 1472 votes during a time when it was easy for Goans to be weighed down by anxiety about health and livelihoods.
“FiiRE along with the founding members of Ideas For Goa are taking initiative to add commercial value to these ideas. For this, we will have to look for the feasibility of these ideas and accordingly search for mentors, venture capitalists etc which will be required to fructify these ideas. We also welcome the ecosystem which includes entrepreneurs, institutions, organisations and the stakeholders in Goa to come forward and have a look into these ideas,” said Mr. DS Prashant who is the CEO of FiiRE.
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Now the job of a facilitator and in this case FiiRE and founding members will see that once the idea is generated by the idea creators the first step is to find its feasibility and willingness of the creator to take it forward and make it commercial by executing it into a project. Secondly, if the creator of idea wishes to team up with creators of other similar ideas and make a consortium for making it a better project which can have more commercial value. Third, in a scenario when an idea creator is not interested in taking up to its commercial value but someone else from the ecosystem is interested it can also be facilitated with the approval of the idea creator.
“By facilitating we mean that we will bring the like-minded and interested stakeholders together on one table and discuss the nitty-gritty for commercialisation of the ideas. We will help them with incubation, prototype, design, finding investor or venture capitalist and even patenting if required,” added Mr. Prashant.
The founding team members will also be reaching out to various departments in the state government. If an idea is related to any particular department of the government, which could be in the field of agriculture, transport, health, IT, etc the founding team members will individually go and visit the concerned departments to apprise them of the idea and look forward if the department would be interested in supporting it.
“We have our full analytic report with data and facts and we will gladly share with the department if they show their interests in supporting the idea. However, this exercise will be done by the founding team members of Ideas For Goa and not by FiiRE. FiiRE will only support and facilitate the ideas for commercialising,” clarified Mr. Prashant.
With this intention and the mission to sustain livelihoods and reignite Goa’s economic engine for a post-COVID-19 world, Ideas for Goa – an open-sourced platform to generate ideas to make Goa more sustainable, prosperous and inclusive (referred to by many as Goa 2.0) was born. The platform is still open to all to contribute ideas regardless of their background and is free of cost. Most importantly, ideas generated are available to anyone to pursue further. The ideas are free as real change especially in times of need happens only with free flow of ideas and bottoms up citizen empowerment.
