A Wish List for Innovation

1. The government could play a major role in making innovation a key factor in economic leadership. There should be a Department of Innovation in the Central government with units in all State governments. 2. Industry bodies like CII should set up innovation centers. 3. IIM Ahmedabad has a center for Innovation, Incubation and Environment. 4. Anna University in Chennai has an Innovation Centre. There is space and a need for hundreds of such centers, especially in academic institutions. 5. As an aid to formulating the research design for this study, the researcher visited the Society for Innovation and Development (SID) at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore for interaction with commerce and industry. This organization helps companies by providing them with incubators for new ideas. However much more needs to be done. 6. Innovators should be honored with national awards. Indian companies should have better facilities for filing patents for innovations and inventions. Many young inventors fall by the wayside because the procedure is so expensive, time consuming and complicated. Government should have a more enabling attitude to protect the nation’s wealth of ideas. 7. The educational system should be based on developing creative and innovative thinking. Thinking tools and methodologies should be part of the syllabus. 8. All technical institutions should have innovation and creativity taught as a subject. Companies should recruit innovative people and support them through the process of development. Textbooks on innovation and creativity should be written. 9. All induction programs in organizations should include creativity and innovation. 10. The new trend in business is that people do not stay in jobs over a lifetime. Most respondents in the survey had been in their jobs only for five years. An intensive program to awaken organizational innovativeness and the possibility of enrolling new employees as organizational change agents should be presented early in the process.