Risk taking, regulation and reskilling important for India to become an innovation hub: IBM's Arvind Krishna

Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM. (Image: Reuters)

For India to become an innovation hub, there is a need for massive reskilling in new-age technology areas such AI, ability to take risk, and conducive regulatory environment, said Arvind Krishna, CEO, IBM.

“We are in a unique moment on the planet. Certainly there is crisis from the healthcare perspective and that led to an economic crisis. But in crisis comes opportunity,” said Krishna while peaking at the NASSCOM Technology and Leadership Forum (NTLF) 2021.

The NTLF is a three-day event from February 17 to February 19, 2021.

“The question is what role does India wants to play. The aspiration is massive,” he said. If the aspiration for India is to be the innovation hub, one needs not only to look at the positive side but also the risk.

“Innovation means only one in three ideas are likely to succeed. So two out of three, I don’t call them failures, but they don’t give economic return in near term. We need regulations and policies that allow for that failure to happen and that is risk taking in business terms.”

“Inside the enterprise or firms, you have got the culture that allows the team to fail sometimes,” Krishna said.

The other important part is building skills. If the artificial intelligence (AI) is going to contribute $16 trillion to global economy by 2030, we need millions of people to be trained on how to use and deploy AI. “You are not going to get trained faculty and instructors everywhere. Can we use this to do digital education? This is not to replace colleges and schools but to augment them so that people come out with the right skills,” Krishna explained.

Finally the data policy, which could have a bearing on how companies interact with data. “India is paying a lot of attention to data. It is a hot topic,” Krishna said.

According to him, data standards should not only be for the local economy, but also should allow for the exports of services in software to happen.

Krishna also stressed the importance of investing in cybersecurity at a time when economy is based on technology.