Considering the pace of growth after the dawn of biotech boom in 2000, the Indian biotech sector will be better served under the science park model that is capable of incubating and mentoring potential entrepreneurs in the sector, said Deepanwita Chattopadhyay, CEO, ICIC Knowledge Park in her address at the international conference on Business Incubation-2009. Stressing on the need for such park, she said such model exist in the US and Canadian regions facilitating the wide and scattered presence of biotech valleys in the regions.

"Our city, Hyderabad touted as the genome valley of India even does not have a science park model," she pointed out. Rajah Rasiah, professor of technology and innovation policy, University of Malaya, Malaysia, highlighted the Taiwanese model that follows a system, where universities themselves play the role of incubation promoters in the biotech sector.

He added that Taiwan advocated model allows knowledge synergies associated with research, development, commercialization, innovation, and incubation to be absorbed by both high-tech and low-tech knowledge industries. The constant appraisals incorporated in the system, he pointed out reduces the time gap between lab to market transfer from 10 years to 6 years cutting down gestation period and enhancing greater competitiveness in the industry.

N Krishnan, director general, Software Technology Park of India, New Delhi in his address, said albeit Software Technology Park of India (STPI) confident of closing the fiscal with Rs 2,00,000 crore software exports, when compared to a sum of Rs 1,80,155 crore last fiscal, the future is not so bright without much of disruption in innovation and scaling up.

Emphasizing the need for strengthening the mentorship development in tune with times, he exhorted the ICT incubating community that assist start up companies to move up the value chain in the IT industry by embracing high-demand high-spectrum IT tools including very large scale integration (VLSI), software as a service (Saas) and virtualization.

Urging business incubators to have a sustainable balanced approach in offshore and domestic development of IT industry, he recalled the days of dotcom bust that pronounced the need to nurture the home industries for long-term sustainable growth.

Raghunandan Rajamani, chief executive, JS State-Science and Technology Entrepreneurs Park, Noida clamoured the need of technological universities in the country to understand the world ICT ecosystem for better utilization of high-end entrepreneurial opportunities. "Education syllabus in engineering colleges should be dynamically designed to generate high-skilled manpower that can grab the current market opportunities in IT," he said.