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Speaking at the launch of the Nasscom-Boston Consulting Group
report on the Innovation plans for the Indian IT and ITeS sector, eminent
scientist and administrator Dr Mashelkar rightly pointed out that the biggest
mistake people make is not when they aim too high and fail but when they aim too
low and succeed.
While this altruism applies to all fields of human endeavor, it
could really be appropriate in the third wave that the knowledge sector is now
embarking on.
So who are the partners who will contribute to the movement.
Nasscom has done yeoman work in the last few years with the well received and
publicized innovation awards attracting the attention even of President Kalam
and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and attracting participations from a wide
section of multinationals, large, medium, and small firms, and even
entrepreneurial startups. Other associations like CII have also done their bit.
The real weak link continues to be the academic and research
institutions that have been mired in their own red tape. And private
institutions are no betterin the process of earning money, they are making
promises to more and more classroom and distance learning students. And, of
course, the availability of finance for innovative startups has been a factor
for many ideas of entrepreneurs not seeing the light of day.
| The Rs 100
crore innovation fund announced by Nasscom is one step that will surely
boost the confidence of innovator wannabes in the industry |
At the firm level too, the focus on innovation has been more in
the form of continuous improvement, necessitated by operational excellence and
quality initiatives rather than conscious search for discontinuous benefits.
As James Abraham, BCG partner pointed out at the presentation to
the industry in Bangalore, new product creation in intellectual property
oriented firms and process innovation should be attempted in all services firms.
To start the activity, diagnostic exercises on the present state of innovation
and the path to reaching a desired state of extensive innovation need to be
undertaken so that serious projects are planned and executed.
The other key recommendation of the study concerns all
participants in the eco-systemthe government, research and academic
institutions, financing agencies in addition to the firms and the associationneed
to work in coherence to build an enabling environment for innovation.
The focus on engineering services has already demonstrated that
there are new vistas of opportunity that hold great potential. Also, the best
way to build significant domain understanding could well be to partner with
traditional incumbent industries for building new value propositions for the
domestic and global markets.
Where does the future lie for the innovation movement and what
are the solutions to the malaise that seems to pervade the eco-system? The Rs
100 crore innovation fund announced by Nasscom is one step that will surely
boost the confidence of innovator wannabes in the industry, and we can seriously
expect that companies in IT and BPO will embrace innovation as their new mantra
for profitable growth in the months to come.
The author is deputy chairman
& MD of Zensar Technologies and the vice chairman of Nasscom.
He can be reached at ganesh@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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