The perfect moment for innovation or 'anusandhan' is now: Six reasons

There come moments in time when all the ingredients for any sustainable outcome seem to be in position.

“In a recipe, every ingredient has a specific purpose”, my daughter, a home-baker explains to me. “The proportion, the sequence, the temperature are all critical. Texture, colour and flavour are important outcomes of any bake. Baking is therefore both a science and an art.”

While moderating an appropriately diverse CII panel the other day, titled “Innovate or Perish – The Technology Leap”, with representation from the government and industry – both domestic and overseas - the key takeaway for me, then, and has been for some time now, that we – India – are at the inflexion point of innovation.

In any case, I do not think that as individual businesses or collectively as a country, we have many options. We have to innovate to thrive. 

Here are six reasons ‘why’

Of course, our prime minister is always ahead, when from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15, 2022, he added huge impetus to innovation, by adding Jai Anusandhan to Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan and Jai Vigyan.

First, the average life span of Fortune 500 companies in the past was 75 years. It is 15 years now. It is expected to halve in the next decade. Being innovative is no longer “nice to be”. It is a “must be”.

Secondly, innovation can be a sustainable wealth creator for nations. Most of the developed world has built itself on continual innovation. However, with disruption taking place around the world in most aspects of our life viz. climate, mobility, energy, technology, value chains, and the multi-lateral system itself, this is the best time for India to step up its innovation capability and capacity. We must not just provide talent to the world, we must utilise it to patent inventions, products and processes.

For decades, developed countries invented and we bought mature technology from them. Now, no one country or part of the world has technology that has matured in any of the areas listed above, so let us not assume the West has it. Instead of paying steeply for yet-to-mature, untested technology, let us innovate ourselves before others.

Thirdly, we are proud of being a chaotic democracy. Surprisingly, chaos predictably creates opportunities for innovation; opportunities to connect dots that are around us in terms of pattern and clues, but which most of us miss out on. The question is how do we enhance the frequency of connecting these dots? Technology has given us the tools to connect the dots. And we must do it fast.

Fourthly, a young person in India lives in exhilarating times. Where he/she no longer describes himself/herself from where he/she came from, but where he/she intends to go. The young person can now receive from and transit to the outside world in real-time. This leads to creativity and entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship breeds innovation and vice versa. It is a virtuous cycle.

Fifthly, the India stack consisting of the identity, payments and data layers allows the government, businesses, startups and developers to use the unique digital infrastructure which has been built in India to solve India’s pressing day-to-day problems. A great opportunity for continual innovation. The stack as we all know is now also being shared with countries who want to adapt it for their own requirements.

Finally, we have the third largest and growing startup ecosystem in the world. Tens of thousands of these startups are tech-led startups, continuously innovating – day after day. Looking to solve our myriad problems. We must nurture this ecosystem further.

Therefore, as I have written before, it is time now that a framework is developed for industry-academia-research labs-startups to come together in something like a national research quad to synergise individual ideas into an innovative whole.

This framework for a comprehensive innovation ecosystem must provide impetus by creating an enabling and risk-mitigating environment by the government. The government has already been very proactive in this regard through its various arms. More needs to be done.

One example could be through ICE:

• Incentivising innovation and R&D investment, focusing on scale and reach
• Capability development: Training, innovation assessments and rankings
• Enabling collaboration across the national research quad through various mechanisms and platforms

The framework must be easy and effective so that it is able to positively impact organisations irrespective of their size.

(Vipin Sondhi is the chairman of the CII National Mission on Technology, Innovation and Research and former MD & CEO of Ashok Leyland Ltd and JCB India Ltd. Views are personal.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the writer. They do not reflect the views of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper