Ketan Desai

Where Are India’s Innovative Companies, Products and Solutions?

Being an NRI who has created two innovative companies in the US (and sold one at a good profit), I find this topic interesting. While this article does address some issues, there are several others that it misses:

1. Culture. The struggle for survival is very intense in India. As a consequence, folks tend to become conservative - as in conserve what you have, for you never know when you may need it. Taking risk and becoming innovative is a major mental change.

2. Politics. Indians have, now for some 80 years, been told capitalism is bad. Socialism good. Two legs bad. Four legs good. Take a look at the founders of "modern" India - including Nehru, a fabian socialist. This mindset is only now being dissipated. Not without a fight - after all, the communists and Congress still sleep together.

3. Religion. This cannot be overemphasized. The concept of consumerism and materialism is foreign to Indian religions such as Vedism/Sanatam Dharma, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism. Where there is no want, there is no need to innovate or create.

4. Opportunities. In education, career, etc. Too much of the "sameness" mentality. That is also changing, but it has a ways to go.

Esperion Spin-Off: Does It Signal the Start of a New R&D Era?

Good analysis. I would go further and say that Big Pharma may change so that each company becomes a holding company. Each therapeutic area could be spun off into a separate company. There are plusses and minuses to this. The advantage is that an individual therapeutic area does not feel it is being held down by another, or is getting a step-motherly treatment. The disadvantages are that cross-functional learning and applications will be lost, as will flexibility in terms of human resources, scale, etc.