National Knowledge Commission calls for new knowledge paradigm at CII meet [India]

There is a need for a generational change in the country’s educational system, if the country is to reap what is today being termed as its ‘demographic dividend’, which could otherwise become a ‘demographic nightmare’, according to the National Knowledge Commission (NKC).Addressing newsmen after an interactive session on ‘Roadmap for Reform: NKC Recommendations’, Commission Chairman Sam Pitroda called for structural reforms in the five core areas of access to knowledge, concepts, creation, applications and services.

According to Mr Pitroda, today education had become indispensable to the country’s ambitions in the knowledge economy and therefore there was a need to develop a new knowledge paradigm, simultaneously addressing concerns of disparity and inclusion.The session was jointly organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry and NKC as part of the Commission’s outreach programme. On the occasion, Mr Pitroda released NKC’s ‘Report to the Nation’, which is a compilation of the over 300 recommendations it has made to the government with the objective of tapping into the country’s enormous reservoir of knowledge, mobilising national talent and creating an empowered generation, with access to opportunities.Mr Pitroda gave a bird’s eyeview of the reforms recommended by the NKC, whose three-year term is coming to an end, and said that “the speed of implementation, however, remains a challenge.” Citing the example of the telecom revolution in the country, which he fathered, Mr Pitroda said “15-20 years is a short period in a country’s march to progress, but we have to begin the journey towards building a truly inclusive and qualitatively significant knowledge society.”

On his part, Mr Ashok Ganguly, NKC member and a doyen of Indian industry and scientific research, said that “knowledge was the central theme of the 21st century and it must become an integral part of our development strategy. We have to shift from seeing knowledge only as reverse engineering and make innovation a part of our knowledge systems.”Mr Ganguly said that the NKC had observed a structural shift taking place in the employment scenario of the country, with entrepreneurship finding acceptance among an increasing number of people. “If we are to successfully tap this spirit, it is essential that shift from an education system that relies on learning to one that depends on thinking.”

Pointing to the challenges in the school education system, Dr Sujatha Ramdorai of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) said that “today the demand for education existed among all sections and it was for both the public and the private sector to develop a suitable learning model that ensures school education is available to all.”Dr Ramdorai, who is a member of the NKC, said that while developments in all other sectors have become an acceptable part of Indian life, our education system, especially the school education system, remains in the 19th Century. “As the ecology of education differs from region to region, we must put in place a system that encourages local autonomy.”

Stating that the higher education system was in a state of crisis, Prof Deepak Nayyar of Jawaharlal Nehru University said, notwithstanding some islands of excellence, what was needed was expansion and creation of quality institutions. “Today what we have is not enough and even what we have is not good enough.”Prof Nayyar noted that any expansion of the system of higher education would not be possible without enhanced levels of financing, both from public and private sources. “This is even as the government reworks the entire system of undergraduate colleges, which today is out-of-date and inappropriate.”

Prof P Balaram, Director, Indian Institute of Science, concluded the interactive session by pointing to the inadequacies in the country’s research systems and said that there was a need to reinvigorate the research systems. He said that today research activities were largely funded by the government, “with philanthropic support for such activities being almost non-existent”. The time, he said, was right for industry to step in and fill this vital gap.In his welcome address, Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII, highlighted how NKC’s recommendations were a blueprint for reforms of knowledge-related institutions and infrastructure in the country. Mr. Banerjee also mentioned various initiatives of CII like Knowledge Mission, Global Innovation & Technology Alliance, Innovation Mission, University –Industry Council, Intellectual Property Owners Committee etc. Similarly, Mr Salil Singhal, Immediate Past President, CII Northern Region, disclosed the various initiatives that the industry had begun taking to ensure that skills-based education got the prominence it deserved.

Open Innovation, Commons based Peering

    Open Innovation is a new business approach which industries, corporate houses and the like are applying in order to commercialize their internal innovations and to obtain a huge plethora of external innovations in order to commercialize them as well. In this approach, firms work and interact with external partners and create newer and better technologies and products and thereby benefitting from this interaction. Commons based Peer Production is the term coined by Harvard Law School Professor Yochai Benkler to portray a new model of economic production, in which the resourceful energy of a large number of people is coordinated with the aid of internet into projects without the usual hierarchical organization.

   The idea behind open innovation is that in the world there are millions of people who have widely distributed knowledge. Industries and companies do not have the man power or the resources to create everything on their own and nor can they rely on the research of their respective R&D departments. Therefore companies open there R&D laboratories and research centers to the people outside their organization in order to tap into this vast distributed knowledge for their own benefit.

    It is rightly said that we are living in a world where a particular idea becomes old within minutes because there is be someone in a different part of the world who would have improvised on that idea and moved on. Open Innovation has gained momentum because of the Internet which has changed fortunes for so many companies the world over.

    Internet sites like zyrist.com, innocentive.com, yourencore.com are providing a platform for many individuals to create, innovate and discuss ideas. In this era of globalization, companies need unique capabilities in order to leverage benefits faster and more effectively than its competitors. This can only be done if they adopt a policy where they welcome people from outside to generate new ideas which would not only benefit the people who are bringing these ideas in terms of remuneration, but also to the companies which would reap in huge benefits and save a lot of money by not spending it in-house.

   In order to adopt this new and fast growing approach, the organizations need to dispel some deeply rooted thoughts from within their organizations. “The conventional wisdom says that sharing IP and other sources creates a public good where everyone shares in the benefits, and there is no way to generate private returns.” (Wikinomics, 2007) On the contrary sharing of knowledge can help drive innovation and create wealth. Here is a list of key benefits of open innovation and peer production:

• ·         Bind External talent: These days the speed and complexity of change in technology is so immense that no company can create all innovations which are needed to compete with competitors under a single roof. We are witnessing a vast sea change in technology and science which are advancing fast and companies are using and deploying new knowledge in unanticipated ways. Many intelligent firms understand this innovation by using peer production and open innovation to involve more people in developing newer ideas.
  
•           Boosting demand for complimentary offerings: Firms that encourage open innovation and peer production can boost demand for complimentary offerings and provide new opportunities to create added value and IP. Just as Wikipedia is gaining popularity, which has convinced its Founder Jimmy Wales that there may be a market for a Wikipedia branded line of books.
  
•            Reducing Costs: With open innovation and peer production companies can save a lot of money. In this chapter we would see how IBM and other big companies have saved millions of dollars by adopting this model.
  
•           Shifting the locus of competition: “Publishing intellectual property in non core areas that are core to a competitor can undermine your rival’s ability to monopolize a resource that you depend on.  In the software industry, publishing code has enabled IBM and Red Hat to migrate the locus of competition from operating systems to applications, integration and services.”