“Restructuring knowledge institutions key to innovations'

BANGALORE: The triple bottom line (people, planet and profit) approach represents an attempt to strike a harmonious balance between the needs of economy, ecology and society. The need of the hour is to focus on the changing nature of innovation and technology and try to create a business model from these changes that will revolutionize the Indian corporate structure and society.

Speaking at the 13th Quality Summit organized by CII on “Identifying & Understanding the challenges of technology, environment & society,” Sam Pitroda, Chairman, C-SAM inc. said, “ Technology is changing all societies across the globe in terms of work, education, thought process and overall work life style. It brings transparency, responsibility, accountability and better social justice.

Talking about innovations, he mentioned, “The nature of innovation is changing all over the world and are becoming more and more multi disciplinary — engineers, doctors and social scientists are working together in innovations.”

“ I strongly believe that the key to technology and innovations is going to be based on how we restructure our knowledge institutions which I feel are indispensable to the growth of the nation. We should focus on the changing nature of innovation and technology and try to create a business model from these changes that will revolutionize the Indian corporate structure and society,” he added.

He underlined that Indian corporate were relying less on local innovation but doing more of copying and learning from others. To increase our value addition, more knowledge is required to be created here, he said.

He stated on the fact that for India, the key drivers for development would be the knowledge institutions. As chairman of the Indian National Knowledge Commission, he elaborated on the five key elements of knowledge; concepts of knowledge, creation of knowledge, access to knowledge, application of knowledge and governance of knowledge.

Stressing on the need to invest more on education, technology and understand new innovations, he said, “ Corporate India should recognize the role of young entrepreneurs, new innovations and latest trends and should break the age-old hierarchy system, traditional rules and must respond to the changes happening across the globe in technology. It should lead the changes in the society and prevail on the government to change.”

Answering to a query from the audience on rural —urban divide, he noted, “ We should make rural India the back office of urban India.”

He also appealed to the audience to encourage local production.“ Today it is easier to import, than manufacture locally. We can't be a nation of services only, we need to improve our production and manufacturing, thus enabling us to be well grounded in the manufacturing sector.”