CSC chooses India as launchpad for COIN

The US-based Computer Science Corporation (CSC) has chosen India, the land of IITs and universities, as the launchpad to experiment on its newly conceived Collaborative Open Innovation Network (COIN) called Pragyan.

The company has roped in more than 3000 students, mentors and researchers from various universities and over 70 technical institutes across the country on demand-driven projects to 'drive rapid innovation in information technology.'

Announcing this here today, R Lemuel Lasher, chief innovation officer of the $14.7-billion software services company, said India was chosen for implementing COIN before replicating the experience in other parts of the globe because of its ecosystem in terms of promising new ideas in the IT industry apart from being a low-cost centre.

According to him, the company would fund mentoring to bring industry-relevant topics to the focus of academic research, provide demand-driven projects to students and researchers through what it termed as a perpetual programme of open innovation initiative.

The projects would be mainly related to the design and development of service-oriented architecture in IT.

"Whenever a team comes up with any viable innovation relevant to the industry needs, the CSC would try to enter into a commercial agreement with the institute or the group to licence the solution rather than owning it," Lasher said while responding to a question on the business model the company would like to follow in this collaborative effort.

"The single biggest problem being faced by universities and other institutes of higher learning is finding relevance for their research work in the given context. This is because these institutes are largely unaware of the demands of the industry as they lack real time interaction with the industry. COIN will try to fill this gap," he said.

According to William Koff, vice-president, CTO, Office of Innovation of CSC, about 82 per cent of innovations was found to be demand-driven rather than supply-driven. He said through Pragyan, CSC would mostly offer projects to work on solutions relevant to its customers to teams of students and researchers rather than funding the research projects of their own choice.

"We will evaluate their ideas as well," Lasher said, adding that the idea of open innovation emerged from the understanding that more innovation was happening outside the CSC, so need to absorb these outside efforts. He refused to spell out the details of resources the company would plan to spend on the Indian initiative.

While the core of COIN would be 'to drive rapid innovation' in IT, the company would also be keen to recruit students and researchers of their choice subsequently.

"Like any business enterprise, CSC too has its own commercial interests. We will also use the open innovation initiative as a platform to find talent in IT research," Lasher said. The company has also entered into a similar tie-up with the University of Hyderabad, which is rated as the best among all the central universities.