Scaling Innovation for the Forgotten One Billion 8 th Annual - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Scaling Innovation for the Forgotten One Billion

8th Annual Deshpande Symposium

11 June 2019 | Lowell, Massachusetts

Gopalakrishnan - Deshpande Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship IIT Madras

Panel Overview

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Our Panel

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Raghu Rao CEO, GDC Krishnan Balasubramanian Professor, IIT Madras KV Anand Instructor, GDC James Chung AVP – Research, GWU

India: Challenges in Innovation Ecosystem

• Indian economy growing to $10trn by 2030 from under $3trn today
• Population - 1.25bn; Income distribution and affordability highly skewed
• Per capita income: Top 1% - $35,000; Next 19% - $5,000; 80%- ~$1000
• OECD per capita income ~$39,000
• Most innovations in developed world are designed for the affluent; they

bypass the bottom of the pyramid in India (a billion people)

• Yet India has ~15,000 start-ups, the most in the world after USA
• Most of them are not sustainable, nor do they have a deep impact;
• What’s missing?

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India’s Innovation Ecosystem: Missing Pieces

• Low level of R&D in the country
• R&D spend ~0.8% of GDP (USA - 3%; China – 2.5%, Korea -4.3%)
• Private sector spend on R&D almost non-existent (except in pharma and

biotech)

• Few universities have a systematic process for managing IP creation,

including monetization

• Very little domestic venture capital
• A very high proportion of the VC investments in India comes from

foreign investors

• Small number of local angel and seed investors

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India’s Innovation Ecosystem: The Oasis…

• Where are the successes in Indian innovation?
• MNC research labs setting up labs in India to tap the cream of Indian

scientists

• A few government institutions have R&D but they are not in the

commercial sphere

• A few corporates and universities focussing on frugal innovation - e.g.

digital payments, micro-finance, cardiac, ophthalmology, space,…

• Finding resourceful and ingenious workarounds to overcome difficult

practical problems - not amounting to scientific / technological breakthroughs

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Innovation Ecosystem at IIT Madras

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The culture at IIT Madras

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Post-Incubation Eco-System Incubation Eco-System Innovation Eco-system IP Eco-system

https://www.iitm.ac.in/

Responsive

IP Cell Simplified Process

Search Tools

Search Engines IP Companies

Incentives

Rewards Recognition

Marketing

Corporate Start-ups

Publicity

Reach Stakeholders Media

Awareness

Students Faculty

P O L I C Y

LANDSCAPE OF OUR IPR ECO-SYSTEM

https://www.iitm.ac.in/

IIT-M ENTREPRENEURSHIP ECOSYSTEM

Ideate Pre- Incubate Incubate

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Support

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IITMEF - IIT Madras Entrepreneurship Forum

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Nirmaan E-Cell Innovation Ecosystem Project M.S. Entrepreneurship

On Campus Off Campus

The Innovation ecosystem

Bringing unlike minds together

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How

• w is II

IITMRP TMRP structured tructured fo for In Inno novat ation ion?

Innovate to Survive

Support entities for E&I, IP, Legal, VC, Angels, …..

 IITM Incubation Cell houses

sector-specific incubators which include…..

⊶

Rural ral Technology chnology & Business siness In Incubator cubator

⊶

Bio io In Incubat ubator

• r

⊶

MedTech dTech in incubat bators

• rs

Cha haracter acter of

• f ou
• ur In

Incub ubates ates at at II IITM TM In Incub ubation ation cel ell

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George Washington University

• Straddling the Innovation spectrum -

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I-Corps Nodes and Sites

GW Global Network

Comparables (Capacity Building)

Developed Countries

• US
• Korea
• Japan
• Singapore

Developing Countries

• India
• Mexico
• Brazil
• Philippines

Our Experience In India - GW

• Institutional Culture:
• Researchers: deep & diverse technologies, markets, capabilities & work ethic
• Staff: strong commitment, effort, and capabilities, but not enough scale
• Customer Discovery by Teams
• Interview Quantity: Averaged 75 interviews v. 100+ in US NSF I-Corps. Comparable to other

developing countries, but less than NSF I-Corps.

• Interview Quality: High
• Mentorship:
• Not enough, and some mentors struggled with the process.
• Local Infrastructure:
• US > Korea > Japan > (India=Sao Paulo=Manila) > Mexico City
• Challenges in India include curriculum oversight, instructor training, mentor oversight, team

management, recruitment, and metrics

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From I-Corps to I-NCUBATE…

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Key Differences: US and Indian Universities

What we need to be mindful of as we do a Lab to Market initiative in India…

• Business-Academia are considered to be mutually exclusive;

Faculty not keen to get involved in business and entrepreneurial activities

• Lack of strong incentive structure for entrepreneurship
• Economic compulsions turn entrepreneurs (students, researchers) away
• Guru Sishya relationship – Ascription by Status
• Learning by Studying v. Learning by Doing

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Key Differences between I-Corps and I-NCUBATE

The operating environment of I-NCUBATE in India -

• There is no NSF equivalent in India
• A shoe-string budget
• Our teams work in an environment with scant or unreliable market

information

• Huge variation in capabilities across organisations impedes efficiency of

interactions and the customer discovery process

• Team composition – almost all are engineers; E.g. No MBAs or business

majors

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Some Steps We have taken to streamline customer discovery under I-NCUBATE

• Additional class room sessions – a Pre-Course introduced
• Extra exposure to management and marketing concepts for students and researchers with a

pure engineering/tech background

• Extending the program by 1 week – to get more acclimatizing runway for teams

to understand the difficult external environment

• More practice sessions on conducting customer interviews
• Laying down some rules for team composition
• Workshops for on-boarding Mentors
• Encouraging Faculty to “be around”; teams with active faculty perform much

better

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Finally…

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In Conclusion

1. Innovation required for India is very different from innovation required in the developed world

• Price sensitive economy –affordability; bargaining culture
• Socio-economic context of India very different (language, literacy levels, not DIY, etc.)
• Two key policy objectives of start-ups – to stimulate employment; to reduce exclusion of under-privileged sections

2. Redefining research – slant of innovation is towards low ticket size (<10% of western costs) & large scale 3. Diversity across participants in an I-NCUBATE cohort is very high

• The emphasis on process in I-NCUBATE helps immensely

4. Challenges in maintaining curriculum standards and metrics for correct outcomes

• Syllabus, pedagogy, context, local business practices,
• Gaps in the innovation ecosystem –lack of mentors, prototyping facilities, angel/venture funding,…
• Cultural aspects – learning styles, teacher-student relationships

5. Absence of a “carrot” and a “stick” (no NSF equivalent) – new levers for motivating teams

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A typical innovation under I-NCUBATE…

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This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

Burning problem in India …

About 7 mn burn injuries every year ~ 1 mn burn victims hospitalized every year 0.14 mn deaths every year due to burns

Small surface burn Large surface burn One of the problems faced by these patients is the small area of healthy skin available for grafting

Can something be done to help the burn victims?

Key learnings from our Customer Discovery exercise….

1. The #1 problem in treating large burn wounds is Infection – not the wound itself. 2. The biggest reason for infection is Lack of availability of sufficient skin to cover the large wound. 3. Burn surgeons suffer from high level of fatigue and severe stress due to extreme workload. 4. Surgeons treating vitiligo patients also encounter problem of limited availability of healthy skin.

Our Solution …. Increasing the skin expansion ratio from the current 1:4 to 1:25 can save the lives of thousands of burn victims Sprays skin pieces to cover larger burn wounds Much better than the existing methods of treatment Lower infection rate Less Surgeon fatigue Lesser deaths; faster healing Better surgery outcome Our Innovation – A Skin Spray Gun

Do we have a viable business model? The challenges….

1. Limited number of hospitals in India have burn treatment centres

• Just 80 centres with 1400 beds for 7 mn patients per year
• Most burn centres are in government hospitals

2. Number of skilled burn surgeons is also highly limited 3. Who is the customer? How do we recover our expenses?

Viability could lie in trying out a few strategies:

• 1. Innovative business & revenue model of pricing for Spray Gun and Consumables
• 2. Cross-subsidising burn patients with Vitiligo patients

Thank you

. Gopalakrishnan - Deshpande Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship IIT Madras