Hugh Durrant Whyte, CEO, National ICT Australia (NICTA), was in Chennai recently leading a delegation to showcase Australia’s innovation and research excellence in ICT and to partner with Indian IT companies.

Funded by the Australian Government, NICTA develops technologies that generate economic, social and environmental benefits for Australia. It collaborates with industry on joint projects, creates start-ups and provides new talent to the ICT sector through a NICTA-enhanced Ph.D program.

With five laboratories around Australia and over 700 people, NICTA is the largest organisation in Australia dedicated to ICT research. With world class institutions and large IT companies, India can develop such a ‘vibrant’ ecosystem with focus on research, said Whyte in an interview with Business Line . Excerpts:

Are you looking at tie ups with IT companies?

NICTA has a long standing relationship with Infosys as Narayana Murthy is in our advisory board. This time we visited Wipro, Tech Mahindra, TCS, HCL and Cognizant. This was the first meeting with many of them. We need to start a long conversation as we have lots of overlaps. It is for us to encourage them to think about developing innovation business in Australia and for them to really come and engage with us.

How critical is NICTA for Australian industries?

NICTA is a not-for-profit company funded by the Government with annual grant. We are owned by universities. Our focus is that good research is converted into wealth creation in Australia. We work with companies or banks and transform their business by partnering with IT companies to do that. We do not build products but prototype them. If there is an opportunity but we do not have expertise, we spin out a new company.

You spin out start-ups….

Yes, in the last 10 years we have spun out nearly 15 start-up companies. It took some time for us to settle down and now we are pushing out a company every three months. For example, Audinate develops technology to deliver high quality audio over the Internet. It is now used in Olympics for sound distribution and has become a successful technology companies. This year we spun out a company in predictive downloads from mobile phones, medical devices, optimisation and different varieties of companies were opportunity exist.

But, not all ventures would succeed, right?

Yes, not all of them will succeed but it creates an environment where university people also chip in. It is similar to the Silicon Valley where Stanford University plays an important role in start-ups. Australia has good research but we are not good at making out of it. NICTA is trying to address this market failure in research. How do we get fantastic researchers create wealth for our country? Spinning out companies is a good way of doing it.

Can NICTA’s model be replicated in India?

Our concept may be unique but can be replicated in India, which has very good academic institutions and IT companies. Get as many smart people as you can, put them in a confined space, sprinkle money on them and leave them alone. You cannot do much more that. Innovation is not an easy thing to capture and you do not try to kill that in the process.

Are Indian companies focussing enough on innovation?

Indian companies are focussing on R&D but they are still business focussed. They must recognise that putting more money into research will make them more competitive.

How about IP creation?

You need to be patient. Indian companies have done an excellent job in creating reputation for delivery, for value and now is the time when may be whole innovation will start to increase. This is exactly why we are here and how to be part of that. No one has a recipe for innovation. There is no such thing.

raja.simhan@thehindu.co.in

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