Bet on India to be the next innovation leader

[BacktoCricaddict]

A detailed, but easy-to-read article on innovation incubators.

 

https://www.discoursemagazine.com/economics/2021/02/23/innovation-is-a-geographically-localized-and-temporary-phenomenon/

 

China:

 

The deal that Deng Xiaoping did, and his successors mostly honored, was that in exchange for a monopoly on political power, the party would leave enterprise alone. Turns out that’s all enterprise needs: a hint of freedom and off it goes. Three decades of starvation, re-education and repression under Mao Zedong had not extinguished the spirit of the Chinese innovator.

But the party may now be over. Not because the West is sick of seeing its manufacturers undercut, its intellectual property undermined and its appetite for free trade sated, but because Xi Jinping, president for life, is a different type of ruler from those who went before him. The Ming are back. You can see it in the increasingly dictatorial powers and arbitrary decisions of his henchmen. The goose that lays the golden eggs is being throttled ... China’s spell at the top of the leader board for innovation will come to an end. Maybe not this decade, but soon.

 

India:

Who then will pick up the challenge? My money is on India. If it can sort out its rickety infrastructure, corrupt administration and chaotic communal relations, India has enormous potential: a vast country that speaks English, allows a measure of freedom, values education, and has a long tradition of enterprise and spontaneous, bottom-up development. Then the innovation will have come full circle, back to where it first started.

 

For it was in India, 1,400 years ago, that the decimal system of counting, together with the crucial innovation of zero as a number in its own right, was first used. In 628, we find Brahmagupta, an astronomer living in a kingdom of western India called Gurjaradesa, known for its scholarship and enterprise. He published a book called the Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta, or the “opening of the universe.” Though mostly about astronomy, it had chapters on mathematics and is the first known work to treat zero as an actual number, rather than as a symbol for nothing as the Babylonians had done.

 

Gurjaradesa was the Silicon Valley of its day, the place where innovation thrived. Don’t rule out the possibility that it could be again. Gujarat, which covers part of it, is one of India’s most entrepreneurial regions.

 

There's more good stuff.

 

Edited March 22, 2021 by BacktoCricaddict

[diga]

sorry for digressing...

but isnt this the BrahmaGupta, quoted above, who had some misfortune of seeing his daughter widowed and then turned his attention to Math to keep his daughter occupied ? Lilavathi Ganitha was quite a book in Kannada . 

 

 

[Khota]

India is fully capable of doing it but will never do it. The reasons are obvious.

[zen]

a likely scenario is the huge population could put Ind in a chaos (environmental, political, social) 

[Clarke]

All this English & importance of education etc will get you to being the back office, which we have attained to a fair degree. Who's gonna drive the innovation though, govt ? It's broke in between securing borders, propping up corrupt banks & providing for the non tax paying billion plus population. I don't see a DARPA type agency for a long time.

 

The foreign corporations easily get Indian talent to work for them, they don't need to have a local office for cutting edge innovation. 

 

The only hope might be big private Indian corps, the supposedly evil businessmen could come to the rescue by investing in some moon shot ideas locally. 

[MechEng]

9 hours ago, Clarke said:

All this English & importance of education etc will get you to being the back office, which we have attained to a fair degree. Who's gonna drive the innovation though, govt ? It's broke in between securing borders, propping up corrupt banks & providing for the non tax paying billion plus population. I don't see a DARPA type agency for a long time.

 

The foreign corporations easily get Indian talent to work for them, they don't need to have a local office for cutting edge innovation. 

 

The only hope might be big private Indian corps, the supposedly evil businessmen could come to the rescue by investing in some moon shot ideas locally. 

 

Don't forget that a lot of violence is behind the innovation from Europe and United States. Bullying weaker nations or empires and then exploiting their resources was the norm before United Nations came in and soft power started to gain importance, US still goes by old ways in the name of bringing democracy to nations. India may have it's strengths and shortcomings, but I would not want it to use violent ways to get things done.

[kepler37b]

I do not see any major innovation happening in India in my life time. Innovation is risky. Will require huge Investments. Is possible in west where the excess wealth can fund it. But here, the capital is scarce and companies are very conservative.  

[coffee_rules]

No innovation possible if we follow a English based education designed by Lord McCaulay, and we keep generating scores of McCaulay puttars.  Thought was more diverse and in the language you learnt speech, now we study only western science. Rest all are ridiculed.

[Khota]

A country where everyone aspires to be an IAS officer does not have mindset to be innovative.

[Khota]

1 hour ago, coffee_rules said:

No innovation possible if we follow a English based education designed by Lord McCaulay, and we keep generating scores of McCaulay puttars.  Thought was more diverse and in the language you learnt speech, now we study only western science. Rest all are ridiculed.

To me education is not the major issue.

It is the British type governance model which is a problem. Bureaucracy cannot rule India like the empire did.