In India there are 80 innovation centres but they don't have a good success rate. A huge country like India needs about 3,000 centres, that too very fast, said Mr Erez Tsalik, Director (Asia-Pacific) at Systematic Inventive Thinking, Israel.

Popularly know as SIT in Tel Aviv, Systematic Inventive Thinking is a 60-member privately held company, which is now offering consultancy services to the National Innovation Council.

Mr Tsalik said that India cannot bring about innovations based on an Israeli model. It will have to devise its own model. “Therefore our suggestion to the Council was to prepare an innovation model, which can perpetuate itself,” he said.

“Create 50 hubs each year, which can show quick financial and business results. Then each hub should create its own two hubs. Innovation should pay for innovation and not government subsidy,” Mr Tsalik said.

What is SIT

SIT offers consultancy services in problem solving, new product development, strategy, and conflict resolution to large companies and governments globally.

SIT is helping the Council create an innovation road map for India. To kick-start innovation, the company has given proposals to the Council, which it believes, can bring about a culture of innovation in India.

In the last decade, Israel has become a global hub for innovation in science and technology. It is one of the top patent producers in the world.

SIT has a diverse range of clients from Kraft Foods, GE to Airtel and Reliance ADA Group. The Council under the Chairmanship of Mr Sam Pitroda recently invited SIT to offer its global expertise on innovation.

Mr Tsalik says the Council wants to figure out “what works and what does not work while doing innovation”.

Innovation culture

SIT's advice to the Council was “There is a need to promote a culture of innovation. You need to invest in the process that creates innovation and not innovation itself. If you have five best innovations of the year you will celebrate it but that is the end of the story.

“You need to teach the stories about those five innovations to the people at large. It will set people thinking – if those five people could do it why can't we achieve the same,” he recounted to Business Line – on a visit to Israel, organised by its Foreign Ministry.

SIT has offered to the council four proposals for fostering innovation, which involves setting up innovation centres and labs, communicating and promoting innovation across the country, creating a tool kit for innovators and a customised tool kit to artisans, which is specifically meant for innovations.

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