Innovative, After All?

[Hafizzz]

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Is India Not So Innovative, After All?
Is India Not So Innovative, After All? | Blogs | ITBusinessEdge.com

Last month I wrote about speculation, fueled by a report from consulting company Zinnov, that the next epicenter of innovation just might be located in India. According to Zinnov, there are a quarter of a million Indian engineers involved with R&D activities, a number second only to California's Silicon Valley.

But is India really a hotbed of innovation? Not so much, say some experts, including Forrester Research analyst Sudin Apte and Vinay Deshpande, a developer of the Simputer, a handheld computer designed in India. Even though tech companies like to tout their R&D investments in India, most see the country primarily as "a limitless source of bulk staffing," according to a Forrester report. Apte says many companies pay Indian workers on a "time and materials" basis, which illustrates the kind of tasks they typically perform, often product testing and maintenance.

Deshpande tells InfoWorld:

The situation is a lot better than it was some years ago, but most Indian operations of multinational companies are still far away from defining and architecting products.

The article quotes an unnamed software engineer working for a multinational company as saying he (or she) and coworkers do not think out or architect new products in India. "We get to do the coding for new products, and are mainly involved in maintenance or making improvements to legacy products."

Could some of the fault lie with India's education system? In my July interview with Sridhar Vembu, CEO of AdventNet, developer of the Zoho suite of online applications, he told me that India's colleges are "highly regimented" compared to the U.S. and other countries. Vembu speaks with the voice of experience, having attended universities in both India and the U.S. He said:

Rote learning is more common than any kind of creative thinking. So when you recruit college graduates, you often get people with good grades but not a lot of creative thinking skills. You hear about India's IT prowess, but I'd argue that it happens in spite of the education system in India not because of it.

Despite India's struggle to be seen as more than a supplier of inexpensive labor, companies such as Cisco are making some pretty major investments in the country. As I wrote in July, one-fifth of Cisco's global executives will be based at its newly established Globalization Centre East in Bangalore by 2012. Under the aegis of its Global Talent Acceleration Program, the company also plans to open a regional training center in India by the end of this year.

A few companies, notably Intel, are doing product development in India, notes the InfoWorld article.

[ChineseTiger1986]

Honestly, India still has a long way to go, even reaching at China's current level.

So there is no need to poke fun at them.

[StingRoy]

Did you finally heave a sigh of relief?



EDIT: Thanks for finding the article after 3 years of its publishing. Really relevant now.

[Mike2011]

Honestly, India still has a long way to go, even reaching at China's current level.

So there is no need to poke fun at them.

Well we are not so innovative in stealing, copying.

[Hafizzz]

Well we are not so innovative in stealing, copying.

India surpassed China with painting over foreign products and claiming them as "indigenous".

What India stole from Canadian Nuclear reactor :

India's 'peaceful' bomb
India's 'peaceful' bomb - CBC Archives

http://ms.radio-canada.ca/archives_n...9740520er1.wma

An uninvited guest has joined the nuclear club, and fingers are pointing at Canada. On May 18, 1974, India detonates a 12-kiloton nuclear explosive in the Rajasthan desert. It was built using plutonium from a research reactor donated by Canada in 1956. The explosion prompts fierce criticism of Canada's nuclear exports, and a wall of excuses from officials in both Canada and India. Canadian officials say they couldn't stop it. India denies it was even a bomb.

[Trisonics]

Yes its true innovation in India has not lived up but for one moment do not disregard the talent here. Our bureaucracy and continued ignorance to where money should be spent is taking its toll. There are quite a few good articles that I will link later but here are two graphics that show the talent and one of the biggest problems.




PS: lets leave PAK out of this since they are no where close to where India is and no point talking about it when there is no comparison.

[ChineseTiger1986]

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Yes its true innovation in India has not lived up but for one moment do not disregard the talent here. Our bureaucracy and continued ignorance to where money should be spent is taking its toll. There are quite a few good articles that I will link later but here are two graphics that show the talent and one of the biggest problems.




PS: lets leave PAK out of this since they are no where close to where India is and no point talking about it when there is no comparison.

This is a quite honest comment.