Framework of concept paper given below for comments. This deals
with technological innovations.
a)
Corporate R&D started weaning away
researchers from universities by offering better facilities and freedom.
In-house research centers blossomed with hundreds of highly qualified and
competent scientists and researchers working in frontier areas of Science
&Technology. During the boom period returns on investment in R&D was not an issue, firms spent a percentage of
their turnover benchmarking the spend with industry average.
b)
Despite large budget and acclaimed outcome, many
a time firm noticed they could not compete with fast moving players.
Categorization into small r, capital D followed, proving space for catch up
work. It is expected that capital D projects, smal duration projects aimed at
bettering competition would derive strength from capital R work. The pool of
competences developed with capital R projects could be harvested for both
capital R and capital D projects, where the firm is the industry leader but
also for capital D projects benchmarking competitors product in the market
place, with faster response. Portfolio of R & D projects, all marshaled
with internal resources was in order for many years.
c)
Sponsored research was always an integral part ,
researchers generally continued working with alumni institute. Strategic
alliances was an acknowledgement of limitation of doing everything in-house and
complex strategies evolved for managing strategic alliance with shadow teams,
IP sharing , market segmentation etc. acquisition of start-ups for their IP was
more smoother operation.
d)
Open innovation and crowd sourcing was a disruptive practice, firms looked at the
vast pool of global talent and shifted focus from ownership to access. The
complexity of innovation challenges and multiple teams accepting those
challenges call for redefining the contours of global stock of knowledge.
e)
Globalization had seen relative decline in
competitiveness of OECD nations and most analysts agree the only way these
nations can continue to save jobs is to invest in R&D. With the result, we
had seen larger number of talented people working on commercial research than
ever before in human history.
f)
The pipeline taking research to market bellowed
at the research end leading to a jump in global stock of knowledge. Considering
the large ownership base, it can be said this stock of knowledge is publicly
owned. This worked wonders for crowd sourcing of ideas, innovation challenges.
g)
And this also provides an unique opportunity for
catching up economies like India to improve their innovation score without
proportionate increase in national R&D budget. India , a poor nation more
on R&D than Australia, Finland etc. Historically , most of spending was by
government for scientific and research projects. Whereas, the industry garnered
market and developed technological competences based on imported technology.
Thus there was a significant disconnect between government funded research
institutes and commercial firms. Globalization and IT widened the rift to disconnect of minds. Collapse of
joint ventures ended the inexhaustible source of competitive technology with
most technology suppliers setting up their own Indian operations. New
generation entrepreneurs smelled better success in IT enable services and
largest number of engineers today work in IT firms rather than assembly lines.
The so called Indian human resource strength
ends with students graduation , still
Indian government continues to increase their budgets for research by
government funded institutes, calling industry to take the fruits of that
public spend.
h)
India is a large country needing jobs in all
categories and there is revival of interest in manufacturing mainly due to
market demand and IT players are looking for value addition beyond labour
arbitrage.
Hypothesis 1
Indian government can get better returns by funding proposals in
capital D category based on globally sourced capital R.
Hypothesis 2
India firms need to practice and learn to use Open innovation
Platforms.
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