In Praise of an Innovator

As corporate innovation has become more complex, the importance of the individual innovator (think of someone like Edison) has been overtaken by the power of innovation teams. Yet, a recent article in The Hindu reminds us about the power of the individual innovator. Nagaraja, a recently retired employee of Bharat Electronics, was given the country's highest and most prestigious labour award for his innovations that led to considerable cost savings for his company. His innovation? - replacing gold-plated headers in transistors by nickel-plated ones. Read the article to see how Nagaraja attributes his accomplishments to inspiration from his father and a strong work ethic inclulcated from his childhood.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article2564006.ece

Management and Organisation of Knowledge Creation in EU MNE subsidiaries

Just in case you are interested in some recent work we had done with colleagues from SPRU, Taiwan and China, please check out our recent working paper “Management and Organisation of Knowledge Creation in Emerging Markets: a Perspective from subsidiaries of EU MNEs” available at


http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/research/sewps

Authors:Vandana Ujjual(SPRU), Parimal Patel(SPRU), Rishikesha T. Krishnan(IIM, Bangalore), Srivardhini Keshavamurthy (IIM, Bangalore), RueyLin Hsiao(National Cheng-Chi University, Taipei) and Frank Yan Zhao (Shanghai University, China)


Abstract

A key emerging trend in the globalization of innovation is that an increasing share of R&D is being undertaken in Emerging Markets, especially in India and China. This paper focuses on the involvement EU MNEs in this process. It is based on 22 interviews conducted with managers of R&D centres of 15 EU-based companies located in India and China. These companies are amongst the leading R&D spenders in 3 industries: ICT, Automobiles and Pharmaceuticals.



The declared aim of all the surveyed companies is to increase their R&D in Emerging Markets, especially India and China. The two main driving forces for this process are firstly the large market potential of these countries and the availability of a large pool of well-qualified scientists and engineers. A great deal of the activities in India and China are concerned with adapting products and processes to the local market. At the same time a number of companies are devising low cost products specifically for these markets. Another explanation for the growing volume of R&D in Emerging markets is that some of the long established R&D and engineering centres of EU firms have evolved from providing low-cost, low-level support for peripheral activities to becoming global centres for excellence providing support to the R&D carried out in the rest of the company. This is especially the case for design and development of software in the ICT companies in India. It is also important for both software and engineering services for the Automobile companies.

Innovation in India - Article in Ivey Business Journal

In the September-October 2011 issue of Ivey Business Journal, I have provided an overview of corporate innovation in India and identified the development of “creative confidence” as a critical next step in India’s innovation journey. I look at why companies like Tata Motors, Titan, Biocon, Pantaloon and Bajaj Auto have been relatively successful at innovation, and why some MNCs have missed the bus. I conclude by identifying some of the ecosystem-related challenges in furthering innovation in India.

Making Bangalore the Innovation Hub of Asia

This was the theme of the 7th India Innovation Summit organised by CII at the Leela Palace on September 8-9. Speakers represented the best that the city has to offer on the innovation front – multinational R&D centres of GE, Intel, Yahoo, IBM and 3M; successful start-ups like Tejas Networks, Teleradiology Solutions and Vaatsalya Hospitals; and home-grown innovation pioneers such as Infosys, Biocon & Avesthagen.


I had the privilege of chairing the session on Higher Education & Research. Bangalore has the long had prestigious research institutions like the Indian Institute of Science and several Defence R&D laboratories. But it’s a new generation of relatively young institutions that has the potential to change the innovation landscape of Bangalore. Three of these institutions were represented on our panel.

The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is arguably India’s leading centre for biological research. NCBS is now hosting a new Stem Cell Research Institute supported by the Department of Biotechnology.

The Azim Premji University (APU) and the Azim Premji Foundation (APF) have a clear mission – to transform primary education in the country by enhancing the quality of schools.

Srishti Labs, a part of the Srishti School of Design, beings together a design education institution and technology professionals to provide practical and aesthetic solutions.

Each of these institutions fills an important gap in the innovation portfolio of the city. But what was most impressive was the vision and clarity of purpose of their three leaders.

Warren Greving of Srishti Labs emphasized the importance of combining the divergent thinking of creative individuals at the Design School with the convergent thinking of industrial problem-solving. This is what Srishti Labs seeks to achieve.

K. VijayRaghavan of NCBS placed his institute in the context of the growth of Indian science. The British never intended the growth of science in India, and the early scientific leaders – Satyen Bose, JC Bose, Ramanujam, Raman and Meghnad Saha – were accidental geniuses, not the result of deliberate institutional outcomes. India climbed on the Science bandwagon after independence and set up a whole range of new institutions. But these institutions tended to stagnate unless propelled by visionary leadership. Again, success was inspite of, rather than because of, the system. Today, we are entering a new phase of institution building. The people attracted to these institutions have been trained at the best institutions in the world, and now its up to the new Indian institutions to help them achieve non-linear results.

Anurag Behar of APF and APU outlined some of the barriers that hold back Indian primary education. While we have thousands of schools and teachers, we have not created the education support infrastructure – experts in content, pedagogy, and delivery – that can help the school system deliver effectively. This is the gap that the two Azim Premji institutions seeks to close. Since we have a lag in this area, we often don’t have the resources readily available, and the challenge is to scale up through internal capacity development. A critical element of the APF philosophy is that the concepts and practice have to work closely together – all ideas have to be tried out in the field, not just restricted to academic writing.

All three speakers were unanimous in underlining the importance of integrity of purpose in building strong institutions - there can be no compromise on the core mission of the organization. They emphasized the importance of carrying people with them, and infusing a sense of purpose to overcome barriers. They felt that team work was imperative to achieve excellence, and to meet the high bar placed by international competition and societal expectations.

Let’s hope we see more such institutions emanating from Bangalore in the years to come! And watch the achievements of NCBS, Srishti Labs, and the APF/APU closely… these could be the institutions that move us closer to being the Innovation Hub of Asia!

Innovation in TB Diagnostics: The Indian Challenge

Dr. Madhukar Pai of McGill and Dr. John Kenneth of St. John’s Research Institute put together a fascinating conference last week with a simple objective: can we come up with low-cost yet accurate diagnostic tools for turberculosis (TB)?

What’s the problem? India accounts for 22% of all TB cases in the world, and for 25% of the Multi Drug Resistant (MDR) cases. We have a national programme to detect and cure TB that has done well – the whole country has been covered by both diagnostic and curative efforts, and we have met the Millennium Development Goals in this area – yet, case detection has plateaued around 72%, and treatment success rate at around 87%. There are still 280,000 deaths every year due to TB. And undetected and untreated patients spread the disease rapidly to others.

The primary diagnostic tool used for TB – a sputum smear test – is more than a hundred years old, needs skilled manpower, takes several hours to give results, and has limitations with respect to accuracy. New technology in the form of molecular imaging is now available – e.g. Xpert MTB/RIF, a molecular imaging platform developed by the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND – a Geneva-based non-profit) and Cepheid, a Silicon Valley technology company – detects TB accurately and tests for drug resistance at the same time. Yet Xpert’s “discounted” $17,000 price tag for the equipment, and $17 price tag for the cartridge make it an unlikely candidate for rapid diffusion across India and the rest of the developing world.

The Challenge? To create a low-cost, accurate, high-quality, reliable, easy-to-use test to diagnose TB. Though a FIND-study reports a global market size in excess of $ 1 Billion, a quick estimate by a McKinsey & Co. consultant indicates that the size of the addressable market is $75-100 million. Any test developed has to displace the 1.5 million serological tests of doubtful utility conducted by the private sector in India.

Given the size of the market, this may not be attractive for a large diagnostic company. But wouldn’t this be a great learning opportunity for India? Can’t we put our biotechnology, pharma, statistics, and instrumentation students to work on creating alternate TB diagnostics? The spin-offs in terms of experience, learning and creation of expertise would far out-strip the costs involved.

A problem is that we don’t have the organizational and institutional structures or programmes that could make this happen. Nor are our national implementation programmes geared up to provide support to such development. Even if we were to come up with such a diagnostic, we don’t have a public procurement policy that would rapidly diffuse it across the country. And even before that, a big challenge is to follow the rigour and discipline needed to test and validate the diagnostic. We desperately need to build these capabilities if we are to graduate to a higher level of innovation in the biopharma sector. (The usual barriers to innovation exist as well – see my presentation at the conference at https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B_JQN9Y6fQRsNTZmMDBjMjktMmVmOC00NWJjLTllN2YtODVkYjRhZDNiODNk&hl=en_US )

The good news is that we have a growing set of highly capable entrepreneurs in this area. Speaking to some of them at the TB Diagnostics conference, I realized that they are raring to go. Particularly impressive were Dhananjaya Dendukuri of Achira Labs, Anu Acharya of Ocimum and Ravi Kumar of Xcyton Diagnostics. Can we provide the support required to let them flower and bloom?

Focus on Innovation: What it means for CIOs

With Indian companies enhancing their focus on innovation, CIOs face new challenges in supporting innovation initiatives. In this article specially written for CTO Forum, I have outlined what CIOs need to do....

FJ2SI video on Youtube

Here's a short video on how India can move From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation....