ALL ABOUT ENCOURAGING GREAT IDEAS
Kiran Karnik stresses that education is key to creating an innovative society
The alphabet i shot into italicized fame when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, in April 2010. Since then, in seven swift years, i has blossomed into the capital letter I. Significantly, instead of being merely a catchy prefix linked to products, I leads the English language today in spelling important concepts. Innovation, the theme of this thought-provoking book written by self confessed “un-intellectual” Kiran Karnik, is one of these concepts.
In the first paragraph, Karnik concedes that buzzwords usually have short lives. The rest of the book tells us why ‘innovation’ is an exception: “Its longevity and appeal are probably indicative of it having real substance, rather than being the flavour of the month.” I agree with him for two reasons. First, the application of the concept has spread well beyond corporate effort to break glass ceilings in product and service designs – Google’s driverless cars and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic are contemporary examples. Second, the appeal of innovation has crashed through the wall that hampers entry of new ideas into echelons of government. However, even techno-savvy Indian citizens are not quite aware that India has declared 20102020 as the ‘Decade of Innovation’. To take this agenda forward, the Union government is developing a national strategy on innovation with a focus on an Indian model of inclusive growth. The idea is to create an indigenous blueprint of development suited to Indian needs and challenges. To do so a National Innovation Council (NIC) has been created with State Innovation Councils (SICs) in every state and union territory. I guess bureaucrats are working hard to “innovate” a hydraheaded monster as coordinator between so many – over 50! – councils, but let that be.
Against this not-so-encouraging pro-innovation climate, Karnik’s subtitle – Creating an Innovative Society – makes sense. So too does the provocative title. The adjective “crooked” doesn’t mean “rascally” but “deviant from conventionally defined modes”. It makes sense because Indians are innovative. Karnik points out that Indian immigrants founded 13.4 per cent of Silicon Valley’s start ups and 6.5 per cent of those nationwide in the United States. “This is particularly surprising,” Karnik notes, “because Indian immigrants constitute less than 1 per cent of the US population.” He explains why and how leadership in innovative technology has rapidly emerged as a vital component diminishing the role of ownership of capital as measure of wealth and power of individuals and countries alike. With this perspective, naturally more countries are now on the innovation bandwagon. But where did India stand in the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)’s Global Innovation Index (GII) in 2016? At 66, India trails each fellow member in BRICS: Brazil (64), Russia (62), China (35) and South Africa (58). Japan (22), Malaysia (12), Saudi Arabia (42), and Kuwait (50) are all ahead. Switzerland is number 1 among 142 WIPO members. Clearly, in education lies the key to bootstrap India into the league of innovative nations. Karnik is even-tempered in his comments and analyses of successive Union governments failing to spend the targeted 6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as annual expenditure on education. Reading it all leaves discerning, patriotic Indians gnashing teeth in despair.