Innovation's real test

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Innovation's real test

GUEST COLUMN

Subroto Bagchi / Bangalore February 21, 2006
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The greatest test of innovation is in its adoption — adoption by millions of people, to whom a simple solution for solving an everyday, living problem makes a big difference. That is why the world loves Lycra; that is why every mother wants the teenager to carry a cell phone and is also willing to pay for it; that is also the reason the digital camera has changed our way of thinking about photography.

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The Atom Bomb singed every living being in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and damaged future generations as well. It ripped the uniform of war from the mangled body of political patriotism. Periods of great struggle and periods of innovation are sadly, happily intertwined. India, according to Sengupta, has not struggled enough to be innovative enough. I reflect on that one statement and begin to wonder if it can be fully denied.

The last time we built something unique and gave it to the world was…when? After Hampi, Belur-Halebidu in the deep South and the Taj in the North, for hundreds of years, a nation has hibernated. We have not built anything that is architecturally unique.

From Lutyen’s Delhi to the Mysore Palace to the Bahá’í Temple in New Delhi to the bridge over Howrah, each is only a reminiscence. When a nation flounders in an architectural sense, it also flounders in every other aspect of creativity.

Creative fields like art, literature, music, dance, fashion, scientific quest, geographic exploration, spiritualism and architectural design are all interlinked. By looking at the architectural design of a civilisation at a given time, one can immediately understand what was going on in the minds of people who lived in it.

Architecture externalises everything else. When India stopped building the temples and the mosques and the courtyards and the walled staircases, India also slid from the existential layer to the adaptive.

But I think this is about to undergo a change. I believe that we are in the cusp of a millennial shift in which India will, once again, innovate. I see the first signs of spring after the civilisational hibernation that afflicted an entire people for the past few centuries.

I see that unmistakable step of spring in the fiction of Vikram Seth and Jhumpa Lahiri and Arundhati Roy, who are telling the world that people with difficult-to-pronounce names can also write for a global audience. I see the signs when people across the world curl up on their living room sofa to scream or smile at the will of Manoj Night Shyamalan and Mira Nair and Gurinder Chadha.
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Modern management, a child of modern science, sees too much causality in the state of things. As a result, it tells us things like:

“I must innovate in order to survive.”
“I must innovate in order to improve profitability.”
“I must innovate in order to gain market share.”
“I must innovate in order to achieve business success.”

All of the above, says Chandavarkar, are true but not sufficient. To stop at that level is to place innovation outside our hearts. This would cause innovation to eventually dissipate and become stale. Long-term sustainability can come only from inner passion and a foundational belief that “I must innovate because I am like that only” (Good old Indian English).

Innovation thrives in diversity

To flourish, innovation requires a certain fertility condition on the ground. Without it, a creative act is like a good seed that falls on hard, unreceptive soil. It is not without reason, therefore, that trees grow strong and tall in rainforests. The rain forests provide a unique eco-system that leads to spectacular life, myriad hues and a certain vibrancy that you see nowhere else.

Behind the great eco-system of the rainforest is the diversity of nature. The power of diversity in the flora and fauna lead to the possibility of highest growth for any life form in the jungles of Brazil or the Western Ghats of India or under the watchful volcano in Indonesia.

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The writer is Co-founder and
Chief Operating Officer of MindTree Consulting.

Grateful acknowledgments: Yves Doz, Shombit Sengupta, Prem Chadavarkar and other referenced individuals.

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