Can India produce billion-dollar innovations?

Hi Folks,

I would like to share this article with you all which I use extensively in my workshops on
Creativity & Innovations with B-School Graduates where I try to drive home the
realities like why we Indians are lagging behind the Global Inventor’s list or rather why
there has been no noticeable advances or inventions made by India in recent times or
Why India doesn’t dream of Nobel Prizes or why do Indians excel when they leave
India?….

This article has been written by Arindam Banerji and have taken his permission to share
his views with you all.

India has made rapid strides in the world of research and development in the last few
years, but are its innovations world-beaters? In an era that has been dominated by
American innovations, can Indian scientists and technologists make a lasting impression?
What will it take to institutionalize innovation in India?
Arindam Banerji discusses what will it take Indian scientists and technologists to start
producing innovations that become large sources of wealth generation for India, India
Inc and Indians.
Do me a favor: pick up that cell phone near you, and think. Think hard about that phone;
think how this itsy-bitsy device has changed your life.
The truth of the matter is that everywhere -- from Prague to Quito -- people like you and
me have had their lives changed and their social interactions transformed; thanks to this
innovation.
Okay, cellphones were not exactly tiny when they were first introduced, but that's
missing the bigger picture. . .
You see, it is not just the cellphone alone. Think about the photo-copying machine you
use at work, that MRI equipment your elderly relative had to be scanned under, the
computer you work on, the Internet you use to keep in touch with your friends, and on
and on and on. . .
All these discoveries and inventions have fundamentally changed how many of us live
and work; they have also helped generate immeasurable wealth for companies,
individuals and nations that have managed to leverage them appropriately.
So, here's my question for all of us: when will Indian scientists and technologists working
in current day India, start producing such innovations that become large sources of wealth
generation for India, India Inc and Indians?
What will it take for us to get there?
But, where is 'there'? How do we know when Indian innovation indices get there?
A couple of days ago, I was cleaning out my storage closet: ancient papers, empty boxes
and that somewhat crumpled Forbes magazine. You see, Forbes magazine had, a couple
of years ago dedicated much of a special edition to listing out 85 years of mostly
American innovation (a few examples in the list are not US-based).
I have to admit, once you view that entire Forbes article on innovations -- from an
economic as well as social impact standpoint -- the list is overwhelming.
And as an Indian, you keep wondering -- why not in India? Why not, indeed!
So, as a measure, I have used little tables of data from that edition as a way of calibrating
our discussion on Indian innovation.
In a sense, it provides a good backdrop for measuring where we are and how far we have
to go yet, and what this century of Indian innovation could look like.
But, isn't India innovating. . . ?
"I remember being a part of a Committee that reviewed the CSIR of South Africa in 1997.
I remember going to their satellite-tracking center outside Pretoria. I asked them: "Tell
me, which is the best satellite image that you get?" They took me to a corner and showed
to me the imagery, which they claimed had the finest resolution. Then I discovered that
those pictures were taken from the satellite IRS-1C. My friends, I am proud to say that I
in IRS-1C stood for 'India.' Should we not be proud that a developing nation such as
India was producing the finest satellite imagery in the world?" -- Dr. Mashelkar,
Director, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.
Bluntly speaking, Indian research and development has made tremendous progress over
the last decade or so and the proof of this increasing Indian ingenuity is literally available
in every sphere that you can think of. Clearly, I cannot go into every aspect of this, but let
me at least try to delve into a few representative symptoms. . .
R&D Market Size: "R&D (research and development) outsourcing market for
information technology in India is estimated to grow to $9.1 billion by 2010 from $1.3
billion in 2003, according to research agency Frost & Sullivan. The R&D outsourcing
market for IT in India is estimated to grow from the present size of 1.3 billion dollars in
2003 to $9.1 billion in 2010 at a compounded annual growth rate of 32.05 per cent,
Frost & Sullivan, which undertook the study for the department of IT, said in its report.
The R&D outsourcing market for telecom in India is slated to grow from $0.7 billion in
2003 to $4.1 billion in 2010 at a CAGR of 28.73 per cent, it said."- rediff.com
Earth-changing Innovations: "A research team at the National HIV Reference Centre
in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences is developing a vaccine against HIV. The
vaccine, called the HIV-1 DNA, has worked on mice and monkeys. The team led by Dr
Pradeep Seth is now waiting for clearance to start clinical trials on humans." --
Hindustan Times
Disruptive Research: Outlook India has just published this excellent piece on some of
the disruptive research that they found in various parts of India -- I have faithfully
reproduced them in this table here:
Table 1: Outlook India - Disruptive Indian Research
Technology Innovator What it does
Compact Prof. Kirti Trivedi, IIT-B Puts a comprehensive home entertainment
Media Center system into a little box at a fraction of any
competitive manufacturer's cost. And that
25-ft screen.
New Somender Singh, Mysore Dramatically improves fuel efficiency and
combustion acceleration of your car or bike
chamber
design
String theory Gautam Mandal, Sunil Identifies the fundamental building block
Mukhi, Avinash Dhar, of all matter, explains the laws of the
 Sandip Trivedi et al, universe
TIFR; Ashoke Sen,
Harish Chandra Institute,
Allahabad
Software to Professor Ashok Lets you surf the Net—traveling at 120
digitize radio Jhunjhunwala & team, KMPH.
signals IIT-Madras
Nanotubes Prof Ajay Sood and team, Helps create astonishingly sensitive
IISc, Bangalore devices with applications ranging from
stealth to fighting disease
Script Mail Shekhar Borgaonkar and You can input a command into a computer
team, Hewlett Packard, the most natural way—by writing. In the
Bangalore language you know
Food, and CIFTRI, Mysore Automate dosa- and idli-making, match
processing your diet to the needs based on your genes.
Food Defense Food Research Keeps your food sealed, safe and
preservation Laboratory, Mysore nutritious for months on end.
Bitumen K. Ahmed Khan, Makes hard-wearing roads, helps tackle
polymerization Bangalore the menace of plastic waste
using plastic
waste
Intelligent IIIT, Hyderabad Tackle the complex challenge of
language translating English into Indian languages
translation,
text-to-speech
processing
Unique corporate efficiencies: "What do global giants like General Electric and
Motorola have in common with a humble tiffin delivery network comprising 3,500
dabbawallas who deliver 150,000 lunch boxes to citizens in Mumbai each day? The
dabbawallas have the six sigma rating or an efficiency rating of 99.999999, which means
one error in one million transactions. This rating has been given to them by Forbes
Global, the famous American business weekly. Now, these are largely illiterate
dabbawallas.
Their secret lies in a coding system devised over the years. Each dabba is marked in an
indelible ink with an alphanumeric code of about 10 characters. In terms of price and the
reliability of delivery, say compared to a Federal Express System, dabbawallas remain
unbeatable.
Their business models have become a class room study in some management institutes."
-- Dr. Mashelkar, Director, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.
Entrepreneurial Spirit: "Lijjat Papad, started by seven housewives on a rooftop, now
has 40,000 working women and a turnover of Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion). N R Narayana
Murthy put together Rs 10,000 and started Infosys in his small 700 square feet
apartment. Its market capitalization, at one point of time, was more than Rs 60,000 crore
(Rs 600 billion). Infosys has become a pride of the nation today." -- data from Arun
Shourie's speech.
Competitiveness Index: "India jumped 16 places to claim the 34th position in the latest
IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) 2004 as it gained significantly on various
parameters, such as economic performance, government efficiency and business
efficiency, but still lagged on the infrastructure front.
There is more good news. India is developing its competitiveness in software operations,
manufacturing, entertainment and financial services.
The country moved up 10 places to be ranked 12th in economic performance with a score
of 62.59 out of a maximum of 100. In government efficiency, the country improved its
rank from 43 in the year 2003 to 33 this year.
But the best performance came in business efficiency, where it has been ranked 22nd in
the latest yearbook compared to the 51st position in 2003.
In fact, India has outsmarted China in this category which was placed at 35th position
this year compared to 46 in 2003." -- Economic Times
India's potential as an innovation hub: Dr R A Mashelkar, Director General, Council
of Scientific and Industrial Research, said here on Tuesday: "India is becoming a global
research and development hub especially for the companies from the West. Over 100
companies around the world have set up their research and development centers in the
country during the last five years," he said. The demographic shift in the western world
favors a country like India. With its relatively favorable demographic profile of a large
proportion of working and talented young people, India can become a global innovation
hub, from which outsourcing of innovation could be done.
I've stayed away from hyping up Indian brain power that inhabits and in many cases
drives some of the premier centers of innovation across the globe. While this is indeed
impressive, such glowing presence does not address the questions that I asked at the
beginning of this missive.
So, I come back to questioning the basic premise.
But, is this progress good enough . . . ?
The changes taking place in Indian R&D are indeed impressive and in some cases, like
the Indian pharma -- the research and products are indeed world-class. But let us measure
ourselves, before we get too far ahead of ourselves.
Outlook's table of data is impressive enough, but we have to compare the impact of those
innovations with say a list of inventions the 1920s and 1930s (ref. Forbes article).
Just as a measure: the Outlook table of innovations should compare meaningfully with
the innovations from the Forbes tables.
Again the attempt is not to denigrate the work of some of these great Indian scientists but
to be able to calibrate ourselves and see how far we still have to go.
And, to be sure, the AIDS vaccine, if it works well, can out-strip most of the US
innovations that we see here.
But, the kind of social upheaval caused by the Forbes innovations list is for the most part
not there at all in the Outlook list.
Table 2: 1920s
Invention Year Inventor's name
Frozen Foods 1924 Clarence Birdseye
Rocket Engine 1926 Robert Goddard
Television 1927 Philo Taylor
Farnsworth
Penicillin 1928 Alexander Fleming
Synthetic Rubber 1929 Julius Nieuwland
Table 3: 1930s
Invention Year Inventor's name
Jet Engine 1930 Frank Whittle
Nylon 1934 Wallace Hume Carothers
Pulse Code modulation 1937 Alec Reeves
to convert voice signals
into electronic pulses
Xerography or Xerox 1938 Chester Floyd Carlson
machines
Automatic Transmission 1939 Earl Thomson
So, we need to take a closer look at what is really missing in our technology crucible. . .
The gap. . . my lessons in 'Institutionalised Innovation'
My first three months at the University of Notre Dame were a revelation: these months
probably taught me the most valuable and lasting lessons of my professional life.
Under the glare of daily exhortations of a young professor from MIT (Massachusetts
Institute of Technology), I learned the basics of innovation, raising money and selling my
ideas to customers and investors alike.
Strange thing is that after four years at India Institute of Technology, I had no inkling of
any of the above. None at all!
Am I being too harsh on my IIT education? Probably, and things may have changed a
shade since I graduated, but my point here is not necessarily to beat up on the IITs.
Table 4: 1980s
Invention Year Inventor's name
Liquid Crystal Displays 1984 RCA, Kent State
Mevacor to reduce cholesterol 1987 Merck
Prozac to reduce depression 1987 Ray Fuller
Table 4: 1990s
Invention Year Inventor's name
World Wide Web 1991 Tim Berners-Lee
Protease inhibitors for patients suffering 1995 Hoffmann-La Roche
from HIV
Viagra 1998 Nick Terrett, Peter Ellis
Automated DNA sequencing machines 2000 Celera Genomics
So let's take this story a little further.
Sometime in 1996, a couple of us at a large stodgy printer company came up with a set of
ideas that turned distributed computing on its head.
The old fogies of distributed computing that inhabited the company labyrinths told us:
"We've been at this, since before you were born -- go play outside". Yet this large stodgy
company, which was by no means had taken in the go-go attitude of the (Silicon) Valley,
gave us a chance to change the industry.
The company got into a business that it was never into, on the conviction of a couple of
young scientists and business development folks -- going against the cynicism of the grey
beards.
Things did not work out as well as they should have for the printer company, but the
ideas eventually led to a whole new $5 billion industry
In more recent times, as I become significantly richer in grey hair, I've been entirely
unsuccessful in convincing at least two different large Indian software companies of
adopting ideas that have subsequently led to multiple successful start-ups in Silicon
Valley.
Again my intent is not to beat up on Indian IT companies for not taking up technology
challenges and risks.
Are Indians Dumb?
Then there is the story that I keep repeating from my days as a freshman in engineering
school. When asked a question on the possibility of building engine cylinders of non-
circular cross-section, the decrepit professor jeered at the suggestion. Chastened, I never
bothered to find out the truth until I ran across a magazine article describing the use of
elliptical engine cylinders in some high-performance German cars.
Oh! well -- things like this happen, often enough it seems:
'Abhas Mitra, at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, was perhaps
the first and the only scientist, who openly challenged Stephen Hawking of Cambridge
University, who is regarded by many as the modern-day Einstein. Naturally, Mitra now
feels vindicated following Hawking's own admission two weeks ago at a conference in
Dublin, Ireland, that there isn't a black hole 'in the absolute sense'. In essence, Hawking's
'new' black holes never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they
keep emitting radiation for a long time -- exactly what Mitra showed in his paper.
'Hawking's about-turn has vindicated Mitra. But, in retrospect, he feels sad about the
treatment he got at home while trying to take on Hawking all by himself. Too
'embarrassed' to be associated with a man who challenged Hawking, even Mitra's close
colleagues avoided him and he became an outcast.
'To add insult to injury, BARC authorities removed Mitra from the theoretical physics
division on the excuse that this division was meant only for those doing 'strategic
research'.
'"The ironic element in this whole exercise," Mitra told PTI, "is that the person who
actually dared to show that there cannot be any black holes was completely ignored both
by the academicians and the media.'
But then again I remember my background under-grad hardware course at a second-tier
US school -- every week we'd get at least two questions, for which no answers existed --
innovating a solution was the only approach.
Different approaches to teaching innovation -- don't you think?
I know, I know, 'India ke baare mein humne bahut bura-bhala kaha diya." But, once
we've satisfactorily beaten up this messenger, can we turn and take a look at the hard
issue that really faces us.
If you look at a few of the key innovations from the eighties and the nineties, we literally
get kicked in the gut. The question that screams out again and again is: when will India
do this?
To understand this, we have to look at something called 'institutionalised innovation.'
So, what is institutionalised innovation?
Okay, so what is institutionalised innovation anyway -- encouragement for innovation
when embedded deep within key institutions of society allows for a steady stream of
high-impact innovations like the Polaroid, cell-phone, Xerox machine, MEMs (micro-
electromechanical systems) and so on -- the hoops that innovators have to jump through
to make a difference gets lowered.
You do not have to be one-in-a-billion to make a difference -- being one-in-10-million is
good enough. And those numbers make all the difference. It is this improvement of odds
that forms the crux of 'Institutionalisation of Innovation.'
So, ask yourself: would it take one Indian in a 100 million who could -- while working in
India -- come up with something as earth-changing as the jet-engine? Or do you think it
would take one Indian in a billion to achieve that feat?
Now ask yourself: what would it take to reduce the odds so that one Indian in 10 million
could produce something fundamentally earth-changing like the photocopying machine?
How would we have to change as a society and as a country to reduce those odds of one
in a billion Indians innovating the next radical shift in technology to, perhaps, one Indian
in a 10 million achieving the same?
If you can figure out the changes, you have figured out how to institutionalise innovation.
You have figured out what it takes not only to produce one good innovation every couple
of decades, but to produce the kind of steady innovative disruptions that Tables 6-9
indicate.
Look closely, every few years within the US, somebody has come up with and produced
an earth-shattering innovation or two. That does not happen by magic or coincidence and
it isn't because the Americans are any smarter than the Indians.
It's because the US society, academia and industry have institutionalised innovation.