Establishment of Apple of India

This month, American tech company Apple reached the $3 trillion mark in market capitalization. This made it more prosperous than most countries. The question is, will India be able to produce a company like Apple or not? The answer is ‘no’ – not until we turn our university campuses into powerful economic accelerators. but how? This will require an understanding of how innovation works. For that, we need to know how a research- and growth-driven economy works and the essential role of universities in this.

foundation

Innovation requires the establishment of an ecosystem, which requires the creation of institutional framework and research infrastructure. To build an ecosystem, we must start by connecting institutions nearby. Facilitate easy access to tools and equipment for each other’s students and teachers, create an open, inclusive environment and incorporate each other’s strengths. Building research infrastructure should be envisioned for an ecosystem rather than an institution. Such a system would make optimum use of resources. The initial funding for building large research infrastructure needs to come from the exchequer. Government funding is an initiative to turn ideas into practical solutions in science and technology-led innovation. Once kick-started, start-up companies need to be financed by private investors, such as angel investors and venture capitalists. Fostering innovation goes beyond creating and providing access to physical infrastructure. It has excellent technology transfer offices, access to legal counsel and law firms, funding opportunities outside the government, and most importantly, world-class faculty members.

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Technology transfer offices and incubators play an important role in the commercialization of technologies. Their part is to ensure that universities are encouraged by providing a physical space with technical and legal help to commercialize individual faculty driven innovations. To do so, they need to build independent mechanism(s) for their governance, funding, and a competitive process of licensing inventions to third parties. University incubators need the freedom to work and establish relationships, both government and private, to raise funds to support start-up companies within their ecosystem. There is also a need to put in place a mechanism to encourage them back. Finally, technology transfer offices need to formulate clear guidelines regarding ownership rights over inventions coming from universities.

A proper legal framework is needed for university-driven innovation to mature. After consultations and amendments, Parliament is required to pass the Protection and Use of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill (PUPFIP), 2008. While there are other policies and guidelines, making PUPFIP a law would help in formulating a clear and uniform set of rules. Universities’ lack of clarity on intellectual property rights to commercialize inventions from government-funded research programs. In addition to infrastructure, funding, and legal support, the innovation ecosystem requires early adopters to risk their time and energy to take products and solutions to the wider public.

a wide reach

While STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects will lead to innovation from university campuses, broadening access to cover all streams within the liberal arts is essential. Universities need to cover a broad spectrum with integrated curriculum covering best practices from all disciplines. In addition, the university curriculum needs to move away from focusing exclusively on awarding degrees on a broad range of subjects to providing vocational training towards developing the skills of the students for a specific job. Focusing on innovation should not divert our mind from problems in fundamental science or other streams. Funding for applied science should not be at the expense of fundamental science.

With nation-states ranking many technology-driven companies in the top 20 of global GDP, universities can play a vital role in boosting the economies of all countries. The time has come for universities in India to provide value outside their traditional place of knowledge and teaching. Continuous public funding to build world-class research and development infrastructure and recruiting the best teachers in our university system is the first step towards realizing this dream. Equally important is to encourage and provide the faculty the freedom to dive further into the space without sacrificing critical thinking. This would lead to the use of the ‘innovation quotient’ as the defining criterion for ranking universities, and not parameters such as graduating class size and faculty-to-student ratio.

Binay Panda is Professor at JNU, New Delhi