New commendable reflections of initiatives regarding comprehemsive innovation policiies were felt in just concluded Training Course jointly offered by UNU_MERIT,Netherlands, NISTADS, New Delhi and CDS, Trivandrum.
A significant number of stakeholders including subject experts, research scholars, industry representatives, independent organisations and government represenatives were brainstorming for six days about various probablities, models and frameworks to understand products, processes and practises of inmovation linkages. Delegates shared work-experiences regarding their perceptions and recent work done about the emerging patterns of innovation vis-a-vis prevalent concepts in this field of Innovation Studies. They also tried to build a more mature approach towards complex web of conventional, non-conventional performance indicators to measure the innovative activities across the university labs, industry firms and Govt. sponsored research institutes with the additional effort to understand the implications of the constituent factors leading towards Innovation.
The discussions went around the core elemetns of economic development, S&T human resource development , R&D leading to product development, how invention gets channelised towards successful commercialisation and what are the secrets behind world renowned success stories of Asian export orineted manufacturing hubs with innovation as a significant contributing catalyst.
FIRST PHASE:
In a competitive technology race, it is increasingly realised that being a developing society has some inherent advantages helping to leap frog. This rapid catch up is possible due to rapid technological diffusion & absorption. This opportunity has been given by changes in technology.
S&T policies play a major role in fostering absorptive capacities of individuals, firms, sectors and national economies in the second wave of globalisation. Goal of any pragmatic S&T policy should be to understand the increasing dynamism of techno-managerial economics of development. Thus it becomes mandatory to have substantial Knowledge and Physical infrastructure to move towards primary stepping stones of country`s R&D planns having realistic targets.
New industries like, IT, BT or Knowledge orineted manufacturing industries are creating more and more opportunities of learning by giving attractive incentives for research projects so as to enhance their human capital. This human capital is essential in building synergistic relationships & networks between actors.
In globalised knowledge economy, R&D activities are increasingly mobile and interconected. This is evident from ascending availability of codified knowledge in the form of various information sources. The diverse interpretations of the Innovation term were observed in recent days ranging from:
i) Economic exploitation of new research ideas
ii)Capability to expoit new combinations of pieces of knolwedge
iii)Complex combination of distributed knowledge sources across a set of agents
& institutions
The thin-very subtle but gradually visible distinction between R&D and innovation was
underscored during this debate leading towards classification of firm specific, sector
specific and generic innovation outputs.
Need of Attitudinal Change:
Any ambitious organisation in this era should move:
a) From raising resources towards promoting change,
b) From best practises to context specific planning,
c) From standard policy making to better learning processes...
SECOND PHASE:
A) Innovation Policies: European Expeirience
The disussions were centred around to visualise new innovation policy approaches by accomodating both traditional and new contributory factors. Some key lacunaes were identified which were responsible for imepediments in achieving innovation success. These deficiencies are:
a) Providing support to firms in isolation rather than networking vested stakeholders
b) Immature policy instruments seeking organisational changes
c) Lack of strategic approach to policy system
The fresh European experiences indicates influence of following actors on Innovation
activities in descending order of influence:
1) Input sources
2) HRM behavioural patterns
3) Linkages and networks
4) Systemic instruments of cluster
Nurturing SCIENCE PARK:
This suggest that there must be conscious efforts directed at dialouge
creation having multilateral exchanges with multiple learning support bridged
by material in-house support sterngthened due to narrow technoloy gap in
different firms operating in a perticular cluster.
There has to be mature realisation about the needs of the SMSEs firms aiming at the
innovation goals. These needs can be addressed by:
a) Raising innovation awaremess by periodic mentoring
b) Suggesting ways of technological diffusion to find new innovation opportunities
c) Providing exposure to novel ways of research commercialisation
INNOVATION POLICY--> Way ahead
Effectiveness of innovation systems depends on clarity on the balanced combination of:
i) Creation of knowledge
ii) Diffusion of knowledge
iii) Absorption of knowledge
In this situation, government`s role is changing from investor, regulator to
catalystic facilitator by promoting:
a) PPP & Interface Management
b)Improvement in knowledge governance in firms & clusters
c) Openness between traditional fields of policy intervention and
modern forms of knowledge production-diffusion
Thus, new Policy Packages can be introduced by emphasising:
i) Demand oriented innovation policies
ii)Inducing more public procurement of resources and capital
iii)Shaping more contemporary relevant regulatory norms
iv)Stimulating articulation of needs
These Policy Packages can be supported by Strategic Intelligence like:
a) Monitoring & evaluation of policies
b) Sound analysis of innovation systems
c) Intelligent benchmarkiing practises
d) Foresight Planning
e)Inclusive policy design process
B)Financial instruments to support innovation
Market supports the process of commercialisation of technology by raising money throogh:
Equity, Debt and Venture Capital Funds.
Innovation efforts may fail because of:
i) Failure in creation and maintenence of legal environment conducive to private
sector investment in innovative activities
ii) Lack of power to appropriate fruits of R&D patents & relaxation of anti-trust
activities
To stimulate the innovation processes these are the strongly effective financial
measures:
a) Subsidising exchange of R&D personnel between private and public organisations
b) Tax incentives for R&D, Direct Funding Grants, Joint Coperative R&D Projects
c)Creation of specialised market mechanisms with occassional help of Venture Capital
Optimal Administration of Grants:
MATTHEW Effect is observed predominatly in the allocation of Research grants in various
S&T R&D projects. This Matthew effect is visible in accumulative advantage gained by
scientists due to autonomy & effectiveness with less efficient monitoring amethods
assessing accountability & efficiency. The Gatekeepers embedded in Govt. officials and
Peer review cadres administer the processes of finalising the research grants.
C)Educational Policies to foster Innovation
The contexts related to education are changing with refernce to innovation. Various skill based technologies are contributing towards economical growth. Knowledge has become a source of competetive advantage. new opportunities of educational innovation are given by emergence of global market inherent in Brain Gain and Brain Drain. Therefore significance of skill based vocational education has increased like never before.
The economic effects of higher education contributes to the demands of R&D in various sectors.
The increasing availibility of educational opportunities help to debate the new ideas of
growth and development. Howver, culture of lifelong learning must be encouraged across all
dissciplines of education.
Scholars criticise argument of educated HR inducing innovation as it`s uneasy to measure:
i) marginal productivity
ii) Work satisfaction, social status and intrinsic emplyement
iii) Cost-Benefit analysis of education
iv) Tacit knowledge gained on the job
Relevant questions must be asked about validity of education as a input for innovation:
i) Is development is not possible without education?
ii) What is immediate corelation between level of education and innovation
iii) How to analyse link between Consumption of education and Degree of prosperity
iv) What are real complements of education in physical, technological terms
v) How countries investing in education gain from knowledge assets accumulation?
Problems of education in developing countries:
a)Discrepencies between educational requirements & available financial instruments
b)Low quality & Unequal access of education
c)Lack of relevance with reference to sectors e.g. Agriculture
d) Too academic, little practical & proffessional exposure
e) Insufficient attention for non-formal education
f) Regional, social and gender disparities in education
g) Mismatch between education and labour market
D)Clusters
Regional dimensions of innovation can be described by indicating tacit knowledge which is geographically concentrated in specific regions leading to spillovers. The agents carrying this tacit knowledge is called Social Capital. This capital constitutes implicit regional advantage for innovation plans.
The cluster is mode of organisation of productive system, characterised by geographical
concentration of critical mass of economic actors and other organisations specialised in common activity developing inter-relations of market nature contributing to competitiveness of it`s members and territory.
Benefits of clusters are:
a) Increased productivity
b) Specialisation of factors
c) Economies of scale (Labour, R&D, Technology, Capital)
d) Time-Cost savings & Just in Time Practises
e) Collective learning
f) Access to Market
g) Image of attractiveness of territory
h) Knowledge spillovers and Technology information
Clustes have some inherent features. It has diversity of instruments borrowed from tailor
made mix of instuctive policies. Thre are various entry points in idealised sequence for
policy design by mapping, selecting and initiating innovation activities leading towards
growth. clusters are means of the larger goal therefore there has to be critical
evaluation of them.
THIRD PHASE:
A) Impact of IPRs on Innovation: Background
IPRs gives incentives on letting others to make, buy and copy certain technology. Patent reduces information assymetry between inventor and market helping to avoid the reinvention of wheel. Patents make markets more mature. Despite this, there are some disadvantages of monopoly. There is no guarantee that diffusion of knowledge will happen as per expectations. Thus IPRs are increasingly becoming tradeoff between invention, innovation and diffusion. Therefore, we should never look towards IPRs in isolation.
Even if it is highly regarded form of codified knowledge, there are many tacit elements in patent documents. This creates technological gap between competitors. This regime favours creation of Temporary monopoly because it is believed that R&D time and invention investment is sure to yield a some amount of payback.
Impact of IPR Regime:
a) Possibility to increase Capacity to absorb technological knowledge
b) New business models and investment proposals
c) Establishment of Linkages in innovation model
d) Greater acces to technological know-how
e) Motivation for enterprenurship
f) Better visualisation of market conditions and demand
g) Growing interaction between International Political Economies
h) Test of Risk taking attitude
Modifications in IP regime may be introduced looking at emerging changes in technologies and
shifting patterns global structure of industry. The strategies of multinational firms must
be studies in order to understand their influence on policy domain in international
treaties and fora. This will help to evolve capabilties and strategies of Indian Firms.
Therefore, the strategic options available with Indian Research Firms are:
a) To exploit relatively less expensive research skills
b) Outsourcing, subcontracting of R&D activities to universties and other institutions
c) Establishing R&D consortia and Looking for joint R&D projects
d) Focussing on new use patents
e) Developing new process patents by optimisationn and new performance mechanisms
Therefore there is more need of partnership between public sector, industry and R&D
institutions. This is transition phase where shift from less to more complex, more risky
and investment intensive innovation will be the challenge ahead of Indian industries.
B) Rural Innovation
Ten Commandments of Rural Innovation:
i) Invention is not compulsory for innovation
ii) Transfer of technology not necessary promotes innovation
iii) Inventions/modifications by rural pepole are not inherently superior to scientific one
iv) Training is not enough for innovative capacity building
v) There are no lessons learnt by some successful exaamples
vi) NGOs are tail-end disseminators of innovative practises
vii)schematising kills new innovative initiatives
viii)This is particilatory technology development
ix)Private sector involvement & profits are necessary for pro-poor innovation
x) New investments are needed, new ways of working expected
In rural innovation practsies, linear flow of technology is observed where mandates are compartmentalised and there is specific lack of recognising beneficiaries in a evaluation mechanism. Problem about any policy is, it is not enforceble like laws.
So, how to enable Rural Innovation...?
a) By building coalition of actors from different domains
b) By acknoledgeing benefits & stakes of all actors
c) By learning from every technology, process and context
d) By highlighting impediments in converting good idea into product in economy.
C) S&T Infrastructure:
There should be efficient interoperability in S&T infrastructure.
i) Labs, workshops, planetaria, extension center, science club
ii) Data centres,animal house, germplasm, repositories, libraries, designs, museums, data
generators-collectors
iii)Journals, network of editors/peers, databases, proffessional societies
iv)Incubation park, S&T park, high-tech park, test house
v) Stock exchange for Start-ups, S&T parks, VC Managers, rating agents & their sydicates
vi) ICT backbone, Ecommerce set up, spot exchanges on elctronic trades
vii) Instrumentation intensity/ facility, availibility of equipments
viii) Rsearch institutes controlled by proffessionals, govt. administrators, banks/funds, local
legislatoes/societies, managers under non-profit mode and profit mode
ix) Institutes of standards, measures, quality, rule setting bodies, certifying authorities
x) Policy guidlines, leadership
