Give Me An Idea

Innovation is the key for the production and processing of knowledge. A nation's ability to convert knowledge into wealth and social good through innovation determines its future. This presents us with a challenge: of the resurgence of an innovative India, since in recent times the 'I' in India was seeming to stand for imitation and inhibition, not innovation.

There is a definition of 'innovator' that I like: one who does not know that it can't be done. This requires a special mindset that risks exploring the world beyond the seemingly possible. We, Indians, are risk-averse. But in scientific research, there should be no place for those who preserve the system in a prefabricated, unaltered way. A friend of mine, CEO of a company, once told me, "We don't shoot people who make mistakes, we shoot those who do not take risks. What do you do?" I said, "In India, we shoot people who take risks!" This is true. The most culpable are government labs—run more on rules than research objectives.

One must realise that manufacturing and science and technology are two different endeavours, culturally and operationally. In manufacturing, we look for zero defects and no failures. And science insists on a fundamental right to fail. Stevens and Burley, in a 1997 study, list the odds facing would-be innovators by analysing data from new product development and venture capital experience. A universal curve was revealed, illustrating the number of product ideas surviving each stage of the development process. Out of 3,000 raw ideas, 300 are submitted: leading to 125 small products, nine significant developments (four of them major), 1.7 launches and one success! In India, the odds are higher. Projects face an early death for, if jettisoned midway, they run the risk of audit objections.

So, here is the question—can we fund risky research, kite-flying or crazy ideas or out-of-the-box thinking? I think we can and should. Let me share our experience of doing this at the laboratory level, at the CSIR level, and now, at the national level. When I was the director of the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune, we set up a 'Kite-Flying Fund'. We said we will support ideas that aim to attain some unattainable goals, meet some stretched targets, or follow novel strategies in problem-solving, things that haven't been done before. This fund generated a lot of excitement. I remember a fierce competition among scientists, where many innovative ideas sprang up.

When I moved to CSIR, we replicated this concept to create a 'New Idea Fund'. During the last five years, this has generated 400-odd new ideas. We have funded only 20 of them; we are so tough on our criteria on what constitutes explosive creativity. This has spurred our scientists to aim for increasingly higher levels of innovation in CSIR and even individual labs are setting up such funds now.

At a national level, we have launched the New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI). The words 'technology leadership' are deliberate. They will remind us that we want to create an India that will 'lead and not follow'. NMITLI looks beyond today's technology and seeks to build, capture and retain for India a leadership position in the global arena based on technology by synergising the best competencies of publicly fundedR&D institutions, academia and private industry. It is based on the premise of consciously and deliberately identifying, selecting and supporting risky ideas, concepts and technologies that could be potential winners. We have around 225 partners today in this initiative, 65 of them from the private sector.

We are beginning to see the breakthroughs—a new TB molecule, a common man's laptop, a new liquid crystal display system and so on.

Science is an exploration of the nature of reality, both inside and outsideus. The emphasis is on things quantifiable and measurable, on theories that can be tested and demonstrated, and facts that can be observed and verified. Imagination plays a vital part in both science and art, but in science it has certain constraints. As Richard Feynman has said, "Whatever we are allowed to imagine in science has to be consistent with everything else we know. The problem of creating something new, but consistent with everything seen before, is one of extreme difficulty." The difficulty with science is often not with new ideas, but in escaping old ones. A degree of irreverence is essential for creative pursuit in science.

What we need most at this time is to promote that irreverence in Indian science, by changing personal attitudes, funding patterns, creating new organisational values, creating that extra space for risk-taking, respecting the occasional maverick and rewarding the risk-taker. If this is done, the 'I' in India will again truly stand for innovation—and that, too, world-class innovation.