Sujavna 2:14

It is 11am on 01 April 2012.

And I have been indeed very pleased to have become aware in the last few days that there is a National Innovation Centre (NInC)  and that this Centre is developing  Cluster Innovation Centres (CIC) across eight industrial clusters in India. Mr Sam Pitroda, Innovation Adviser to the Indian PM is credited to be the brain behind these developments, I understand.

And yet, a disconcerting ambivalence keeps nagging me – would these CICs really spur innovation across these eight clusters? My ambivalence is a reaction to the stated objectives of these efforts; while facilitating incubation centres is a stated objective, the others appear to be a rehash of simple productivity objectives, marketing objectives, business development objectives. Even the methodology of partnerships (with the likes of CSIR, ILFS, MSME Foundation, CII and FICCI) reeks of a paucity of ideas and a penchant dislike for risk-taking. And finally the approach once again is top-down in its prescriptive model rather than a bottoms-up.

So what is my point? It is that the NInC and the CIC have simply forgotten that Innovation starts at their doorsteps. Where are the innovations in the CIC approach, in its operational models, in the partnership paradigms, in the performance targeting and monitoring and in turning the whole environment of innovation upside down - from Innovation being a operational efficiency tool and/or a business  success strategy to one of creating and sustaining an affordable ecosystem of strengths that a whole community of value-enhancers (not just supply chains) in economic clusters benefit from?

And why are CICs designed to be inward looking or just insular as far as their impacts are concerned? If we acknowledge that today’s local cluster economy is increasingly interlinked to a global village (market-place), then isn’t it time that the CICs also look at collaborating with other CIC equivalents across the world?

I guess I will be cogitating on these and allied matters in the coming weeks and will be writing more on this. Hope you are having a great weekend and preparing to begin the new financial year in full gusto.