'Crowd sourcing' important for innovation: Pitroda

In this edition of Young Turks on CNBC-TV18 Sam Pitroda, advisor to the Prime Minister of India and chairman, National Innovation Council, Saurabh Srivastava, chairman, CA Technologies and member, Innovation Council, and Arun Maira, member, Planning Commision and National Innovation Council discuss various aspects related to the impact of government policy on innovation and vice versa.

The Prime Minister has put technocrat Sam Pitroda in charge of the National Innovation Council with the idea of preparing a roadmap for innovation in India. The buzz was all about crowd sourcing innovations, the need for an India inclusive innovation fund and also what could be done to nurture innovation in the education system.

Pitroda talks about crowd sourcing and how it is important for innovation."We are in the process of developing the idea, products and services. When that is done we would like to share it with other countries," he adds.

With an eye on innovation to address the challenges of access, equity, excellence and inclusion the government organised the second Innovation Round Table. It saw participation from heads of innovation policy from 50 governments across the world.

The second Global Innovation Round Table was held in the capital this month with focus on leveraging technology in the 21st century to scale and sustain innovative solutions. The discussion centered on issues related to nurturing the innovation eco-system and outlining deeper collaboration among nations.

Below is an edited transcript of the interview on CNBC-TV18.

Q: This is the second Global Innovation Round Table, what exactly is the agenda this time around and what are you going to be focusing on?

Pitroda: In the first Round Table we got to know each other. In the second Round Table our goal is to really focus on four or five big ideas that could work together. We have already identified two, one about Open Government Platform. We have jointly designed Open Government Platform with the US team and this platform will open and share data and documents.

Similarly, we are looking at crowd sourcing for innovation. We are in the process of developing the idea, products and services. When that is done we would like to share it with other countries.

Q: You are here unveiling the National Innovation Policy; the government is anything but innovative. So, is this going to be like any other government policy? How are you going to ensure effective implementation and can you really mandate innovation?

Pitroda: Sometimes you media people are too cynical. There is no connection between these two. Our job is to focus on promoting innovations. In a country of 1.2 billion people, these things don’t happen overnight. People want quick fixes, instant gratification. Immediately, you will ask me what have you invented last week? That’s not the way to look at innovation. It’s a process. Don’t forget we are building a nation, not a company.

Q: How will you assess the effectiveness, efficiency of this policy?

Pitroda: You cannot assess efficiency in terms of percentage. What have you produced in three months, in six months, you can’t do those things. Ultimately over a period of 10 years you will see the impact of innovation.

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Q: Do you think the government’s role should be limited only to funding? Or do you believe the government should actually be the facilitator, providing the right linkages, right platform, right connections for entrepreneurs?

Srivastava: The single most important thing for government is to create an enabling policy framework. It should be easy to start a company, easy to create a company, there should be skilled people available, financing should be available when it’s needed, debt and equity. So far the role of the government is to enable create policy measures, not necessarily to write cheques.

Q: Do you believe that the role of the government is to enable and not just write out cheques?

Maira: Private lenders and investors don’t want to take too much risk. They would rather wait to see the little plant growing into a substantial bush before that bush can grow into a tree. Now, I am going to give it a fertilizer and support. When it’s very small you are not sure whether it will grow up sufficiently. So, we have to provide a combination of government assistance, government supported financial assistance and private money to nurture the very small ideas; ideas when at a very small stage.

Q: This has been a bad year as far as India is concerned. Our GDP figures are looking dismal. There is cynicism and skepticism about the Indian story, how would you react to what is going on, the political discourse that we are seeing, the fact that we now have an activist movement on questioning policy decisions? What does it mean for the economy, for the entrepreneurial ecosystem?

Pitroda: The story of India is not yet over, it is the beginning. When you are a country of 550 million people under the age of 25 the story has just begun. India will continue to grow at 8-10 percent, give us some time. We’ve got to put our pieces in place.

We are living in very exciting times. Technology today offers great hope to solve the problems of tomorrow in a very different way than we did in the past. Not only the ICT and computer and information technology, but also biotech, nanotech, materials, genetics engineering, microbiology, alternate energy sources, will be very important in solving the problems in the 21st century and that’s where the opportunity is. Just because there is a little glitch there is no need to panic.

Also, don’t worry about measuring success the way we have measured in the past. It’s not about GDP, GNP, and per capita income only, these were the measurements of the 20th century. Measurements of the 21st century would be very different.

Q: Would you agree with what Sam Pitroda is saying?

Srivastava: I completely agree with Sam. The India story has just begun. Barely two decades ago, we had no India story. This last decade has probably been one of the best decades for India in a few hundred years and our entrepreneurs are just beginning to get started. For us the world is an oyster.

A temporary slowdown in our system shouldn’t be anything like the India story, because if I look at grassroots, angel investments they are growing at breakneck speed. In the angel group that I have, there is an angel network we used to do two or three investments a year.

It went up to 5 and 6 investments a year, now when people think the economy is collapsing we are doing one investment a month, there is no dearth of entrepreneurs. So, this is a temporary phase, sentiments are not great at the moment, and these things pass. For us the next two to three decades are going to be absolutely brilliant decades.

Q: Arun Maira, let me get you to comment on that.

Maira: We made a few scenarios for the Planning Commission this time for the twelfth plan. There are three scenarios there. One is, if you keep muddling along, as we seem to be in the last few years the India growth story will fall apart and we are seeing the signs of it falling apart. So, we don’t want a story which is muddling along or a falling apart. So, what's the third story? We found a third scenario.

The third scenario is of a headline as the flotilla forms and advances. It means there are various actors in the system within the states and between the states which begin to align and proceed forward together. When we get into the mode of action, we find great possibilities of getting our growth back to 9-10 percent.

It ofcourse depends on the external environment around India but we can get back to those growth rates because the fundamentals within the country in terms of the unfulfilled, large number of people that are trainable and can be very good resources and earners, is very high. So the fundamentals are there, but the ability to collaborate and get things done is the key. So, our third and best scenario is the flotilla advances on which we are making our policy matrix.