India, "Extreme Innovation," and "Reverse Innovation"

RA Mashelkar, former head of India's CSIR [see IPBiz post Dr. R.A.Mashelkar of CSIR ] is now working on an innovation team of Ambani's Reliance Industries directed to "extreme innovation." Mr. Ambani notes: "What's needed is extreme innovation. Twenty years from now, people will not talk about garages in Silicon Valley, but projects in Indian villages and rural areas that will be scaled up."

Inmelt of General Electric pushes "reverse innovation"—the flow of knowledge and products from the developing world to the developed world. Inmelt also noted: ''The next generation of BPO jobs should be in the US,'' he said, and asked Indian businesses to see the world "from (US President Barack) Obama's eyes." Emphasising the importance of ensuring that politicians come on board, he said, "If globalisation is put to vote today in the US, it will lose 70:30."

IPBiz notes that Inmelt might ask that IBM employee in New York (Rick Clark) who was offered to keep his job, but in India at an Indian salary, or to lose his job. One suspects the 70 to 30 split might underestimate US feelings about offshoring.

Also, IPBiz would not bet on either "reverse" or "extreme" to become a predominant innovation form, but they make good reading in BusinessWeek.

See also:
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/04/return-of-mashelkar-report-on-pharma.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/06/indian-option-for-outsourcing-ip-work.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/05/modest-proposal-for-inventor-ownership.html [including: A NBC Nightly News story on 3 April 09 discussed how an IBM Fishkill employee [Frederic (Rick) Clark] was offered the opportunity to keep his job, in India at the prevailing salary in India [20 to 25% of US].]

**Also, Indian innovation: Prof. Anil Kumar Gupta on the Cross Pollination of innovation and its promotion -->

My interest in the article apart from truly understanding how the cross-pollination of innovation works, lay in Prof. Gupta's experiences with the Indian Government and Indian companies and their complete lack of interest/ indifference in using indigenous innovations.

Prof. Gupta narrates various instances of a prestigious Automobile Company, Ministries of the Government and even NGOs all of whom have either ignored and/or failed to respond to and/or shown no initiative to change their ways to adopt grassroot innovations. This would lead us to believe that either they were averse to change or did not trust inexpensive indigenously developed inventions in their industries.