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Our Bureau

Bangalore , Sept. 15

INNOVATION in research and development is far from its potential and the mindset of risk-aversion is behind India's poor marshalling of resources towards innovation. Though the growth rate of 35 per cent might appear impressive, R&D's contribution in the overall revenue generated by the IT and ITeS companies was a negligible $2.7 to 2.8 billion.

Though it was a key link in the R&D matrix, innovation needed more emphasis and alliances between the industry and the academia which had a significant role to play in giving impetus to innovation, said speakers at a CEO summit here on Innovation & R&D organised by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Naascom).

Mr S. Janakiraman, President & CEO, R&D Services, MindTree Consulting, said the total information technology and IT enabled services (ITeS) market brought in revenue of $22.2 billion from more than 3,000 companies in India.

Mr Bob Hoekstra, CEO, Philips Software Centre Pvt Ltd, said that the important idea behind innovating was to understand the customer and added that most of the software for Philips' range of DVD players were customised to cater to local needs.

On the importance of process management, Mr V.R. Venkatesh, Vice-President, Embedded Systems, Wipro, said IP sourcing by forming alliances was another means to strengthen innovation. "A single company might not have all components to get a product into the market. This is when alliances help," he said. Similarly, the academia, according to Mr Harish Grama of IBM Research, was an important alliance.

Stating that bold initiatives could lead to better innovation, Mr Milind Gandhe, General Manager, Strategic Planning, Sasken Technologies, said "ideas carry risk" but supported by adequate funding and a long-term perspective, the same ideas could pay rich dividends.

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