Innovation is such a universally exciting and wonderfully sexy thing that, perhaps, a new age Kama Sutra should be written on it. A sort of compendium of techniques, methods and ‘postures’ for sustained performance or instant creative orgasm, as the case may be... I tell you the world needs it and needs it more than Viagra because when it comes to innovation, getting it ‘up’ is a lesser problem than to make it ‘running’.
And who can teach innovation better than the Indians? Never mind the constant laments of intellectuals like Pavan K Verma and many others who in their pseudo-erudism (my term, erudite+urbanism) just love to doubt our innovative jeans (or is it genes?). The reasons why we as people are so innovative are plenty and obvious. But I am a man of fundamentals…
The first key driver of innovation is necessity. Isn’t it obvious that we Indians are the most experienced and qualified in the area of necessity? After all, we spend our lives bothering about necessities. Everything across the five levels of Maslow’s hierarchy is a perpetual necessity and that too, all at once (that’s something even Maslow would have found hard to grasp!). Example : a gum chewing ipod wielding girl wearing a low cut jeans and spaghetti top giving alms to a beggar, while at the same time avoiding to get raped by other beggars, on her way to the temple! How much necessity is that in one mundane act of living?
Nothing that’s necessary to live can be taken as given in this country. Rather, it is given that everything has to be taken through ever handy imagination and resourcefulness… Which is what makes us so incredibly innovative!
The second key driver of innovation is thinking out of the box. And this is where we Indians are specially endowed. Our ancient culture and our immense religion, not to mention our karmic / genetic causal ontological reality (?&%#$@!?) has made us superbly poised for innovation. You see, thinking out of the box presupposes a box! We as people have never been boxed-in. We are free body and souls which, by the way, is possible only in India. We do not operate in structures and we naturally rebel against rules. We believe, to somewhat borrow Khalil Gibran’s words, that law is a cage in which the bird of our true nature can open its wings but it cannot fly. But we are free birds… free to piss and shit anywhere we want, free to chirp and quack any nonsense to anyone, free to nest anywhere (why do you call it encroachment, idiot)
You still don’t get it, you moron? When nothing is structured and everything is an amorphous soup in one endless ambiguity, nothing can be anticipated, predicted or repeated with any degree of certainty. Every act of living then, by definition, becomes innovative. You may take the same route to office everyday but you still need to be innovative because every day there is a new traffic jam at a new place on the route and for a new reason (or no reason). If we, who live in and thrive on so much of new and unexplored every breath of our lives, are not innovative, who on Earth will be?
In fact, we have mastered this innovation thing so much that this is now institutionalized and ingrained into our kids from the beginning. Just a small (but poignant) example of this is that every government when it comes to power, innovates and can come up with its own version of History to be taught to kids. So much so that by the time a kid passes school, he/she has learnt a beautiful lesson that history is fluid and pliable (much in line with our day to day living unstructured ambiguity) and that each of us has a right, neigh obligation, to create his own innovative version. Consequently, no other country can boast of so many people holding so many innovative yet equally accepted versions of their shared history!
Which brings me to this important conversation these days about need to fund innovation in India. Forceful suggestions are being made on how current funding climate is un-encouraging of and insufficient for innovations we need. I for one do not agree with it. There are big time success stories which no one is acknowledging. See how Niira Radia’s innovations in liaison and lobbying model got funded… Or how A Raja and Shahid Balwa innovated on capital and debt structuring models… I am sure this may have been difficult in any other country. (BTW, the simultaneous use of ‘sure’ and ‘may’ in previous sentence is a proud Indian expression of ambivalence much needed to capture the overall essence / subtle context of innovation).
Still naysayers are saying that sufficient funding is not being done. Some people are just eternally and morbidly pessimists! I know one innovative product concept which was already successful in Europe, Americas and SE Asia and which was courageously introduced in India with such ingenuity that it got funding instantly. Another poignant example is of these good Samaritans who, inspired by Kapil Sibal, have started a K12 school with a ‘USP’ and ‘innovation’ derived out of a clever merging of some latest Ivy league research and some traditional Indian gurukul parampara. They got funded in a jiffy. Why, we have recently funded an innovative chain of women beauty parlors making serious contributions to women self-esteem and empowerment and riding on the subtle yet profound insight that most men under estimate the monthly parlor expenses of their partners! How much more innovation funding do you need?
But I agree on one thing. In a country where everyone is innovating every living breath (as I discussed and sealed previously), it is not possible to fund all innovations. Then there are freaks and idiots there. You got to draw a line somewhere after all.
Let me give you another example. I can say without any modesty and compunction that I have some expertise on innovation, funding and related issues. So what if it does not reflect in my company’s business numbers. After all what has expertise got to do with producing results? Anyways… Only last week I had this guy came to me through a friend’s reference asking for some advice. A seemingly nice and intelligent guy but such a disappointment.
For good 45 minutes he talked about his innovation. But more than the innovation, he kept digressing to social impact, making a difference and similar nonsense. It seemed the dude had landed straight from Mars. I mean, for all the education and fancy degrees, how could he be so naïve? He kept talking about innovative ways to feed hungry, innovative ways of teaching poor, bottom of the pyramid, blah blah blah! That’s no innovation. That’s bloody Mother Teresa!
Bottom line is that from Raja to Reliance, from Balwa to Bharti and from Telgi to Tata, true innovation is innovation to make money. Even the Prahlad guy who talked about bottom of pyramid, being true to the last worn out hems of his Indian jeans, was firmly focused about making money there. No more, no less. Period. And for such innovations (and there plenty in India at the moment) no funds and no resources are a constraint. Lord Kuber himself sees to it!
As for the rest (like my friend’s reference above), bundle them up and put them into a jail. For as they say in Hindi – one fish spoils the whole pond!
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The beauty of sarcasm is directly proportionate to how much pissed of you are with the topic and this blog is Aishwarya Rai of a sarcasm. This is a slam-dunk!!! :-)
ReplyDeleteWhy couldn't I understand what you're trying to say?
ReplyDeleteMy take is all people innovate but, on average, Indians innovate less than other people in the world.
Hence our status as a country whose people are poorer than people in most other countries in the world.
Biswajit, perhaps you took me too seriously :)) BTW, on serious note, there is hardly any incentive and / or encouragement for Indians to innovate in India. They innovate pretty well outside India, though. For example, you may find it hard to spot a true blue Indian innovation getting funded in India. The 'innovations' which are being funded in India are those where either the business space or the model (ideally both) are well established in an international market. Nothing wrong in that, per se except that none of the big ‘first time in the world’ rocking innovations (example Google, but true for smaller and less glamorous ideas as well) can be funded in India... Now India being a unique country in more ways than one (size, diversity, etc.) our problems are also unique. Chances are good that the solutions to those problems will also come from within. But if those innovative solutions are not supported (which they seldom do since mostly, both the space and model are not established) then it is hard to see how we will solve the problems of poverty, health, education and inclusive growth in this country...
ReplyDeleteNitin, what hurts me is the way I see Indians being treated around the world and within India. The reason, as far as I can see, is that we are perceived as poor because we are incompetent. Thins are slightly better in the US, but not by much.
ReplyDeleteAfter thinking a bit about the issues, I have come to the conclusion that we have to learn to work harder and do whatever we do as well as we can. For a country that came up with the Gita and the concept of the importance of work without thinking of the outcome, we do poorly in that department.
Innovation doesn't happen in India because people are unwilling to take risks and fail. If we can get even 1% of the population to do that we'll have a changed society. The questions is how. That requires some serious thinking and strategizing.
Also, innovative solutions are rarely supported by a majority until the solution has been perfected. We don't need Google. All we need is things like crush zones in our trains so that when Kalka derails at 60 km/hr people don't die. And someone who can retrofit compartments with crush zones at low cost.
Biswajit, seems you have been doing some serious thinking buddy.
ReplyDeleteLet me build on and start with qualifying a few things. First, when it comes to creating something or making a larger contribution, we are rather disinterested / indifferent (or is it incompetence?)
On the other hand I feel Indians have a natural affinity towards power, status and money. Not only that, we have special talents to maneuver around power structures, social orders and money machineries. We are naturals here…
Given that, its natural for us to (1) defer to powers that be, and (2) try very hard by whatever means to climb to the upper echelons ourselves (its not that we can't work hard!)
Sometimes I feel that one of the common defining Indian trait is the unscrupulous bania trait. Apne do paise ke faayede ke liye hum kuchh bhi karne se peechhe nahi hatenge… I can bet that no one is making any crush zones for the trains because there is no money in it and not because we lack competence there...