July 2014

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 jul 2014

In the recent ranking of 143 countries on the 2014 Global Innovation Index (GII), India slipped from 66 to 76. Three experts debate the reasons for this fall. Professor Deepa Mani of ISB identifies three issues - (1) Lack of proper measurement of different innovations that happen in Indian companies (2) Traditional organizations lack autonomy, flexibility and customer or business-oriented thinking (3) Access to risk capital, mentorship and linkages between academia, industry and government are required. According to Prof. Mani, 'For things to change, the government, academia and India Inc. all need to work together to encourage people to try new things and provide the risk capital and mentorship for such efforts.' Richard Rekhy, CEO of KPMG India, says, 'Only 1% or less of gross domestic product is being invested in innovation in India. Innovation has to be nurtured. A majority of India's weaknesses arise from the absence of an encouraging ecosystem that fuels innovation.' Moreover he suggests that for emerging market like India, disruptive innovations will be important to propel growth. According to Adil Malia, Head of HR at Essar Group, India as a society is very pattern-driven and slow in adopting new norms and this is the root cause of lack of innovation. He mentions three critical things that are responsible for the level of innovation in India today - (1) Lack of research in universities and institutions (2) Service nature of India's economy results in students getting focused on career-based and structured learning to get better jobs. They lack knowledge seeking approach to learning (3) Most companies, with the exception of pharma and life sciences don't spend much on innovation. He suggests that to foster innovation it has to begin at the student level. Read on...

Livemint: Indian companies' missing innovation DNA
Authors: Zahra Khan, P. R. Sanjai, Arundhati Ramanathan

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