IITs should focus on innovating for the poor: expert

Tuck B-School Prof says innovation the country need to do be focused on the Indian consumer which can then be taken abroad

Talented people from institutions like Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) should be focusing on innovating for the developing and under developed people in India, bringing in quality products at a lower cost affordable for them, said Vijay Govindarajan, the Earl C Daum Professor of International Business at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business.

Speaking to reporters before delivering a lecture in IIT-Madras, he said, "The Indian corporates and multi nationals has been focusing on the developed India. The growth opportunity is going to be on India number two and three. And that requires innovation, including for affordability."

The innovation the country need to do be focused on the Indian consumer which can then be taken abroad. Such kind of innovation requires a different mindset and skills and that is wht the reverse innovation means, he said.

He added that the country should embrace a new form of capitalism, which could be called as social capitalism, which could help more people than the American type of capitalism which has benefited only a section of the seven billion population in the world.