Let’s be fair before we get critical.

Most academic institutions today are doing a lot of good work. There are projects, workshops, guest lectures, field visits, short-term courses. Students are exposed to ideas. They attend sessions. They submit reports. On paper, everything looks active and engaged.

And yet, many of us sense a gap.

The learning often doesn’t go deep enough to change how students think, decide, or act. Confidence doesn’t always build. Responsibility doesn’t always stick. Once the project ends or the workshop concludes, things quietly return to normal.

This is not a failure of intent.

It’s a limitation of the format.

Projects and workshops are designed to finish.

Incubation, by definition, is designed to continue.

An incubation framework forces a different kind of engagement. Problems cannot be left half-solved. Decisions cannot be postponed indefinitely. Effort has to turn into something tangible - a prototype, a pilot, a service, a system, or at the very least, a clearly documented failure with learning attached.

That difference matters.

This is why we have deliberately positioned this initiative as an Incubation & Internship Program, and not as a series of activities or academic add-ons.

Internships, as they are commonly understood, face their own challenges.

Many placements exist largely on paper. Students get certificates, but the work done is often shallow, repetitive, or disconnected from meaningful learning. Faculty members, quite understandably, find it difficult to monitor substance at scale.

We decided to approach this differently.

In this program, internships are embedded inside incubation, not placed outside it.

Students are not sent away to unknown organizations with the hope that something meaningful will happen. Instead, they work within a Living Lab ecosystem where incubation is ongoing and visible. Every task connects to a live process - problem identification, solution testing, execution support, documentation, coordination, or evaluation.

This changes the student’s role in a very real way.

They are no longer passive participants completing assigned tasks.

They become contributors to a system that is evolving in real time.

There is another practical reason this approach matters. Under NEP requirements, institutions are now expected to arrange internships for large numbers of students - not symbolic placements, but meaningful ones. Doing this every semester, at scale, is not easy.

An incubation-led internship model offers a natural answer. Because the Living Lab operates continuously, meaningful work streams already exist. Students can be absorbed across different stages of incubation without overburdening faculty or relying entirely on external organizations.

When learning is anchored to incubation, outcomes cannot remain vague. They have to be defined, tracked, and reflected upon.

This does not mean every student must become a founder. That would be unrealistic, and frankly unnecessary. But every student who passes through this program should understand how ideas move into action, how teams’ function under pressure, and how learning emerges through doing.

That is the shift we are trying to make.

Less activity for activity’s sake.

More responsibility, continuity, and real-world learning.

And that is why we chose incubation — not just projects or workshops — as the backbone of this program.