India still an uneven innovator?
By siliconindia   |   Monday, 12 April 2010, 23:11 IST   |    17 Comments
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India still an uneven innovator?
Bangalore: Although India has abundant labor and a large talent pool that gives an edge over China, the country is unable to be the source of major innovations on a sustained basis. India secured the 58th position international innovation ranking in a study conducted by the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU). The study suggests that India's lower rank is because the environment is not conducive to innovation, which is reducing the efficiency of conversion of inputs to outputs. Indians are individually creative and often come up with ingenious methods of solving the millions of problems they face. There are large numbers of grass-root innovations to prove this. During the dotcom boom, it was common to hear that the American venture capitalists would not fund a start-up unless it had a person of Indian origin as chief technology officer. Hundreds of top-ranking MNCs have set up their software development and R&D centers in India to have access to the vast talent available here. But where are we going wrong? Rishikesha T Krishnan, Professor of Corporate Strategy says that it is because of the many barriers in its social, cultural and political fabric and these are sticky and threaten to persist for years to come. He argues that innovation is particularly important for India and has to be looked at with a sense of urgency. According to the World Investment Report by UNCTAD in 2005, Kuwait, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe ranked higher than India when the country ranked 66th among 117 countries on the Technological Activity Index. It is well known that the country also scores badly on the Human Capital Index. The EIU study does not expect any dramatic changes in the ranking in the next five years. At best, India is projected to improve its rank only by one place to 57.

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