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.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
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!
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!
Saturday, August 27, 2011
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?
Saturday, August 20, 2011
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....
Sunday, July 24, 2011
FJ2SI video on Youtube
Here's a short video on how India can move From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation....
Monday, July 11, 2011
Going Beyond Jugaad: article in Outlook Business magazine
Happy to share with you an article that I wrote for the 5th Anniversary issue of Outlook Business magazine.
In this article, I have argued that while Jugaad may be a good starting point, Indian companies need to go beyond Jugaad if India is to build strong innovation capabilities.
Look forward to comments and feedback.
In this article, I have argued that while Jugaad may be a good starting point, Indian companies need to go beyond Jugaad if India is to build strong innovation capabilities.
Look forward to comments and feedback.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Two Manifestos on Innovation: Great Ideas, but who will bell the cat?
Inclusive growth and similar slogans are not just the preserve of the Indian government. The innovation community, or at least some influential parts of it, is asserting the importance of focusing innovation efforts on the problems that matter such as poverty, health, nutrition and shelter.
“Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto” (ISD) is the title of a thoughtful document emerging from the joint efforts of two institutions with strong credentials – the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex, and the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex. IDS has produced excellent work in the past on core development issues such as irrigation and corruption. SPRU is the arguably the world’s pre-eminent think-tank on Science Policy and Innovation.
At the heart of ISD’s manifesto is the fact that modern science and technology may have great achievements to its credit, but millions of people are poor and malnourished and suffer from myriad health problems. Obviously, there is something wrong with the priorities of innovation if the most talented innovators focus their attention on the next iPod or iPad rather than solving these humanitarian problems. The trajectory of innovation is controlled by commercial interests (read “large corporations”) rather than the interests of people. The ISD manifesto calls for a change in Direction, Diversity and Distribution of Innovation-related activities. Diversity refers to the need for experimentation with a portfolio of options, and using the local knowledge of people rather than depending on centralized, top-down solutions. Above all, the ISD manifesto calls for a change in the politics of innovation – who makes decisions, when and where.
The ISD manifesto is available at http://anewmanifesto.org/wp-content/uploads/steps-manifesto_small-file.pdf
“Knowedge Swaraj: An Indian Manifesto on Science & Technology” (KS) is the outcome of the work of two Indian groups – Knowledge in Civil Society (KICS) and the Centre for Knowledge, Culture and Innovation Studies at the University of Hyderabad. KS builds on a strong Indian tradition of decentralized innovation in the Gandhian movement, and the efforts of movements such as the KSSP and PPST in recent decades, to argue that knowledge needs to be more participative and democratic, community knowledge is valuable, and that the public should be involved in important strategic choices regarding science and technology. The focus is again on inclusiveness and changing the politics of innovation decision-making.
The KS manifesto is available at http://kicsforum.net/kics/kicsmatters/Knowledge-swaraj-an-Indian-S&T-manifesto.pdf
Both ISD and KS emphasise the importance of these cultural and political changes in any effort to avert an ecological disaster. They imply that centralised technology decisions driven primarily by commercial interests and ignoring people are likely to result in even bigger ecological disasters than what we have seen so far.
It’s interesting to note that there is a certain coalescence between how very diverse groups are thinking. Even management gurus are moving in a similar direction. After the original “Bottom of the Pyramid” (BoP) formulation was criticized for seeing the poor as consumers rather than full participants in the development process, we now have BoP co-founder Stuart Hart advocating BoP 2.0 – a BoP innovation process which is socially embedded and evolves ground-up. Vijay Govindarajan, who was only a short time ago Professor-in-Residence and adviser to GE CEO Jeff Immelt, is now running contests for low-cost housing solutions. Innovation for the poor is certainly in fashion!
The other major movement that has embraced innovation for social needs is Social Entrepreneurship. From almost nowhere, this has become a buzzword of current discourse. Of course, its focus on scale, and the possibility of combining doing good and doing well would seem to come in conflict with the ideas of diversity and distribution in the ISD manifesto, but the idea of social entrepreneurship has certainly attracted youth all over the world.
The main problem with both the ISD and KS manifestos is the absence of a pathway to achieve their noble goals. The ISD manifesto at least discusses this issue, but the Strategic Innovation Fora and Global Innovation Council it proposes seem to be mired in the same straitjacketing that ails current political systems. Current “democratic” political systems in many countries have been captured by powerful interests and the legitimacy of movements outside these systems is questioned by the people who have captured these systems (witness the way in which the Indian political class has closed ranks against the civil society organizations in the matter of the Lok Pal bill).
Frankly, I can’t see how either of these manifestos will make much headway without a revolution, or at least an attempt at one. To bring these on to the agenda, we need new equivalents of the Greens parties in Europe. If the politics of innovation is to change, innovation will have to become a subject of politics.
“Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto” (ISD) is the title of a thoughtful document emerging from the joint efforts of two institutions with strong credentials – the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex, and the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex. IDS has produced excellent work in the past on core development issues such as irrigation and corruption. SPRU is the arguably the world’s pre-eminent think-tank on Science Policy and Innovation.
At the heart of ISD’s manifesto is the fact that modern science and technology may have great achievements to its credit, but millions of people are poor and malnourished and suffer from myriad health problems. Obviously, there is something wrong with the priorities of innovation if the most talented innovators focus their attention on the next iPod or iPad rather than solving these humanitarian problems. The trajectory of innovation is controlled by commercial interests (read “large corporations”) rather than the interests of people. The ISD manifesto calls for a change in Direction, Diversity and Distribution of Innovation-related activities. Diversity refers to the need for experimentation with a portfolio of options, and using the local knowledge of people rather than depending on centralized, top-down solutions. Above all, the ISD manifesto calls for a change in the politics of innovation – who makes decisions, when and where.
The ISD manifesto is available at http://anewmanifesto.org/wp-content/uploads/steps-manifesto_small-file.pdf
“Knowedge Swaraj: An Indian Manifesto on Science & Technology” (KS) is the outcome of the work of two Indian groups – Knowledge in Civil Society (KICS) and the Centre for Knowledge, Culture and Innovation Studies at the University of Hyderabad. KS builds on a strong Indian tradition of decentralized innovation in the Gandhian movement, and the efforts of movements such as the KSSP and PPST in recent decades, to argue that knowledge needs to be more participative and democratic, community knowledge is valuable, and that the public should be involved in important strategic choices regarding science and technology. The focus is again on inclusiveness and changing the politics of innovation decision-making.
The KS manifesto is available at http://kicsforum.net/kics/kicsmatters/Knowledge-swaraj-an-Indian-S&T-manifesto.pdf
Both ISD and KS emphasise the importance of these cultural and political changes in any effort to avert an ecological disaster. They imply that centralised technology decisions driven primarily by commercial interests and ignoring people are likely to result in even bigger ecological disasters than what we have seen so far.
It’s interesting to note that there is a certain coalescence between how very diverse groups are thinking. Even management gurus are moving in a similar direction. After the original “Bottom of the Pyramid” (BoP) formulation was criticized for seeing the poor as consumers rather than full participants in the development process, we now have BoP co-founder Stuart Hart advocating BoP 2.0 – a BoP innovation process which is socially embedded and evolves ground-up. Vijay Govindarajan, who was only a short time ago Professor-in-Residence and adviser to GE CEO Jeff Immelt, is now running contests for low-cost housing solutions. Innovation for the poor is certainly in fashion!
The other major movement that has embraced innovation for social needs is Social Entrepreneurship. From almost nowhere, this has become a buzzword of current discourse. Of course, its focus on scale, and the possibility of combining doing good and doing well would seem to come in conflict with the ideas of diversity and distribution in the ISD manifesto, but the idea of social entrepreneurship has certainly attracted youth all over the world.
The main problem with both the ISD and KS manifestos is the absence of a pathway to achieve their noble goals. The ISD manifesto at least discusses this issue, but the Strategic Innovation Fora and Global Innovation Council it proposes seem to be mired in the same straitjacketing that ails current political systems. Current “democratic” political systems in many countries have been captured by powerful interests and the legitimacy of movements outside these systems is questioned by the people who have captured these systems (witness the way in which the Indian political class has closed ranks against the civil society organizations in the matter of the Lok Pal bill).
Frankly, I can’t see how either of these manifestos will make much headway without a revolution, or at least an attempt at one. To bring these on to the agenda, we need new equivalents of the Greens parties in Europe. If the politics of innovation is to change, innovation will have to become a subject of politics.
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