Pursuit of inclusive innovations today is considered
not only essential but also inevitable for sustainable development. However, the
role of grassroots innovators in achieving such a process of development has
remained less appreciated except may be in India, China and to some extent
Malaysia, Indonesia and a few other countries.
Including the excluded in the process of development
has become a worldwide concern because the patience of the excluded is running
out. The need for harmonious or inclusive development is being articulated by
the major Asian economies like China and India. Other countries including the
OECD ones are also debating different ways of harnessing the creative potential
of masses to make the process of development more participatory and also
innovative. The concept of the national innovation system has undergone complete
transformation in India by incorporating the knowledge and innovations of common
people in the formal S&TI system. There is a need to bring about such a
transformation everywhere. No more is the formal R&D system considered
equivalent to the innovation system. Even the large corporations have begun to
look for ideas from strangers, users, observers, supply chain members and other
people outside the organisation. There is no way that national governments can
ignore the role grassroots innovations can play in the redesign of policies,
institutions and social interactions to make society more fair and
just.
Persistent efforts by numerous volunteers of the
Honey Bee Network around the world over the last two and a half decades have
considerably expanded the global understanding of the potential of grassroots
innovators in alleviating poverty and generating sustainable development.
However, a lot more remains to be done and understood. The second international
conference on Creativity and Innovations at Grassroots [ICCIG] follows up the
recommendations of the first ICCIG held at IIMA in collaboration with SRISTI in
January 1997. The impact of the first conference was witnessed in the form of
founding GIAN (1997) and later NIF (2000). Another international workshop on
Building a Global Value Chain around Green Grassroots Innovations (GRI) and
Traditional Knowledge [May 31st – June 2nd , 2007, TUFE Tianjin University of
Finance and Economics] was organised to provide mentoring, incubation and online
support to innovators and entrepreneurs in China, Brazil and India through a
project supported by infoDev at SRISTI. The Tianjin Declaration for Promoting
Green Grassroots Innovation for Harmonious Development was issued on the
occasion [see annexure]. It commemorates the international solidarity for
harmonious and inclusive development to support merging of grassroots,
scientific, technological and institutional innovations and traditional
knowledge. SRISTI had also organised capacity building workshops in six
south-eastern countries in collaboration with APCTT and DSIR, GOI to trigger GRI
movement during 2007-8.
It is therefore the second ICCIG Conference is organised from December 3rd – 5th (noon) at TUFE, Tianjin
City, China and December 7th – 8th , 2012 at IIMA to discuss:
a) How open and collaborative innovation
platforms can be used to generate reciprocity between the formal and informal
sector,
b) How the pursuit of innovation as public good
can be blended with the protection of intellectual property rights of grassroots
innovators,
c) What kind of eco-system interventions are
needed to reduce transaction costs of innovators, investors and entrepreneurs,
and regulators;
d) How policies favoring scouting, spawning and
sustaining GRIID can be negotiated at national and international level providing
incentives for disclosure by local communities,
e) How the youth can be engaged to overcome
persistent inertia at different levels and in various sectors and spaces in
various countries,
f) How to replicate emerging models of
supporting grassroots innovations such as the micro venture innovation fund
[MVIF], Grassroots Technological Innovation Acquisition Fund [GTIAF] and the
social initiative, innovation and entrepreneurship [SIIE] fund for creating
public goods based on sustainable knowledge systems,
g) How the goals of sustainable conservation of
biodiversity, other natural resources and local institutions can be blended with
the goals of rapid economic growth being pursued by most countries despite
current economic slowdown.
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