Autodesk to increase research work in India

SAN FRANCISCO, USA:  The $ 1.8 billion Autodesk, a global digital design software company, is planning to shift some of its R & D work to India in the near future as part of its strategy to leverage design talent globally.  No firm date has been set for this move.

" The company had earlier tried to outsource part of the research work to Indian companies but it didn't work out. Now we are considering the off-shoring model on our own,” said Autodesk's Chief Marketing Officer, Chris Bradshaw, in an interview with CyberMedia News during the company's second Autodesk Press Day event to showcase its latest technologies to the world here.

Autodesk has systematically increased its presence in India's leading engineering and design institutions in recent years by setting up Centers of Design Excellence at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) in Kanpur and Chennai.

"We are in talks with other IITs and the network of National Institutes of Technologies (NITs) to extend these facilities to these institutions too, " Bradshaw revealed.

The search for global talent is what is driving companies like Autodesk to the Asian region.  In the developed economies of the world, the current crop of designers are all set to retire in the next 5 to 10 years. In the emerging economies where there is a growing demand for design talent, there is a shortage, said Autodesk's Vice-President (market development), Jon H Pitman.

" This is because the education sector works in silos with very little integration with other disciplines, mainly in engineering institutions," Pitman said. " The engineering education system has to overcome the talent crunch by moving away from individual performance assessment models to project –based team performance."

This was the only way to overcome the looming talent crunch. Pitman pointed out world’s Top two economies of China and India will be setting up enormous urban infrastructure to meet the demands of increased urbanization in the next 25-30 years. "

The urban infrastructure set up in the US in the last 250 years is likely to be accomplished in India and China in just 25-30 years. And India and China do not have the luxury which the US had in terms of abundance of land, capital, raw materials, energy and talent," Pitman said. This provides huge opportunities for companies in the design segment.

The talent shortage could be overcome by evolving new methods of learning.  Companies have already started setting up project-based globally dispersed teams to access human talent available in various parts of the world.  The second part of it should involve inter-disciplinary work. " Innovation is the key and innovation doesn't happen in silos," Pitman said. " What the world is looking for is T-shaped individuals who have abundant domain expertise in specific verticals combined with the horizontal expertise and cultures of other related disciplines."

Further the future demand for design will be met my digital tools. " The young people today are extremely fluent in working with digital tools. The students need guidance in making the best out of the latest design technologies.  Autodesk believes that design tools should be embedded in to the educational system," Pitman advised.

Autodesk is engaging the student design community in a big way.  More than 230,000 students are enrolled in 11,000 educational institutions in 129 countries in using Autodesk's latest design tools. The student get the software free and are encouraged to share their ideas and work with the latest design environment within the expanding community.