One approach that some supervisors take is to encourage their students to submit a paper (or poster, demo, etc.) each term (or a few times a year) to an appropr

One approach that some supervisors take is to encourage their students to submit a paper (or poster, demo, etc.) each term (or a few times a year) to an appropriate conference or journal. Even if the paper isn't accepted, you get the experience of conducting adequate background research and literature surveys, writing your own work up in a clear and coherent manner, and receiving feedback, some of which may be valuable. You also get used to rejection (and sometimes very harsh and dismissive criticism) as something that happens but isn't the end of the world. Eventually you get published, which in some sense proves the value of your work because it has been peer reviewed and identified as something worth publishing (and has arguably met the often nebulous "novelty" requirement as well.) Sometimes innovative work just gets rejected for publication because it goes against the status quo, and that's perhaps another good lesson to learn (as well as how to get around such bias if you need to.)