Innovate Now, Invent Later

To: editet@timesgroup.com

Subject: India’s Gotta Reset & Dance | Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor of Economic Times:

This has reference to the op-ed titled “India’s Gotta Reset & Dance” by T K Arun in today’s edition of Economic Times.

Nobody denies the benefits of R&D. The only questions in the context of India are

Is R&D necessary?
Is R&D feasible?

As a fast-growing emerging market, India offers a massive headroom for growth by localizing existing technologies. Innovation arising from that approach has created humongous value in ecommerce, food delivery, mobile wallet, rideshare, room renting, and many other industries in India. I recall that the same author had expressed a similar opinion in his previous op-ed entitled Innovate, Not Copy-Paste in Economic Times dated 29 May 2024.

While it’s true that the US military agency DARPA built the Internet, that was 40 years ago. The US government is hardly involved in inventing new technologies these days, content to provide capital via venture capital agencies like CIA’s In-Q-Tel. Most inventions in the 21st century in USA have come from private sector companies. During this century, no notable invention has emerged from any American universities, either. So government- and university-driven R&D can no longer be the right playbook for India.

In any case, government-run CSIR labs have been around in India for decades. Even university-driven research facilities of the type proposed by the author have been around in India for nearly 15 years e.g. IIT Madras Research Park. Not sure how many major inventions they have produced during their entire lifetime.

When it can achieve its short- and medium-term revenue, profit and MSV (Maximize Shareholder Value) goals via innovation, the Indian private sector is unlikely to engage in fundamental research for the forseeable future.

Going by the above, I’d conclude that R&D is neither necessary for India nor feasible in India.

But that’s fine because I reckon that innovation via localization will be sufficient for India to reach $10 trillion GDP and that R&D would be necessary only beyond that size of economy.

I say this on the basis of my following observations:

Japan and Germany have similar size of economy as India (around $4 trillion GDP). While they’re traditionally known as invention powerhouses, we haven’t seen any major inventions coming out of those two countries in this century.
The only two nations that have made tremendous strides in R&D in the 21st century are USA and China. Both of them have economies above $10 trillion.

In short, India should innovate now and invent later.

You might wonder if it’s so easy to transition from innovation- to invention-mode when the time comes.

In the past, I’ve pointed out that product and services businesses call for entirely different mindsets. As I highlighted in my blog post titled Developing The Product Mindset, being good at one can sometime preclude being good at the other – they’re that different.

I’ve been asked several times to explain the difference between product and services mindset. Even if the bit about “several times” is a slight exaggeration, here’s my one-slider. pic.twitter.com/Fd9WoJzpfR

— Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) August 20, 2018

However, I don’t think there’s such a big mindset difference between innovation and invention. Therefore, I’m confident that India will be able to transition from the former to the latter at the right time.

Thanks and Regards.