Innovation as a basic instinct for India

Rajendra Pratap Gupta

Distinguished Professor of Innovation at IGNTU 

THE recently released 'GE Global Innovation Barometer 2018' (GIB) is a good reference document. Having been published by a corporate, it has its share of 'business interests' at its core to ensure that the government and corporates think in a manner that helps the businesses. But some points of the report are important.

Where India stands in GIB

• The top five innovation-conducive countries have the five largest GDPs. They are the USA, Japan Germany, China and the UK.
• India is amongst the countries where multinationals are the main driver for innovation and going by the historical tracking data at a global level, this had the largest increase from 2014 to 2018. 
• When it comes to SMEs being the main driver for innovation in a country (historical tracking data at a global level), Germany is at the top, and India is amongst the bottom (10 %). 
• In emerging economies, governments are now not seen to be driving innovation as much as they were in 2014. 

Since India is trying to grow to a $10 trillion economy over a decade, it must become a pioneering leader in innovation to have a sustainable growth and become a strong economy as we cannot achieve our goals without innovation. The government needs to take the lead for innovation. Instead of MNCs driving innovation in India, it must be the MSMEs that should be majorly driving it.

In 2016, the World Bank said that 69 % of the jobs in India are under threat due to automation, and that's a part of the natural evolution and maturity. But another fact that we should remember is that innovation can create more jobs than we can ever think of. Every household can have a decent job in the next 10 years and for that, we need the 'India Innovation Mission'. Innovation is not prescriptive, that is we cannot issue a GO (Government Order) that India will innovate from tomorrow. 

Let's understand some basics about innovation

• Innovation is not about incremental change or tweaking some processes. It is about a massive change that disrupts and transforms a sector forever. 
• Any innovation needs to qualify a few basic criteria:
• Changes the sector forever. 
• Creates a mass impact. 
• Affects the entire value chain. 
• Disrupts price-market-usage
• Is asset-light. 
• Is scalable and stimulates further innovation.

Innovation can be in three spheres

• Product (mobiles).
• Process (Ola, Uber). 
• System (Toyota).

How to make innovation in India

So, how do we go about making India the innovation capital? India needs to set up the India Innovation Mission (I2 M), under which, the following need to be addressed:

• Top priority: Change the workplace setting, culture and environment.
• Education system has to transform. 
• The government needs to change the way it interfaces with the public and how it functions. Authoritative culture is against the basic tenets of innovation.

What we can learn from the US

• No hierarchy-based protocols and no formalities amongst colleagues. 
• Flexibility in approach in all spheres of functioning. 
• Self-development - quality time with family and for self. 
• Meritocracy based system. 
• Failure is not a taboo. 
• Availability of capital. 

Innovation cannot be enforced externally and has to be inculcated as an 'intrinsic quality', facilitated by a conducive 'ecosystem', with 'planned efforts'. In India, under the I2 M, we need to bring a massive and planned change. 

We should remember that earlier, we innovated when we got into a problem. Now if we don't innovate, we will get into a problem.