Translating research into innovations
Contracting research for innovation
Commercialising innovation
The obvious is rarely obvious and takes a genius to articulate the pathway for everyone else to then follow suit. In this case the genius is IIT Bombay and its leadership. They are not only shouldering the responsibility of being the best engineering college in India – but also designing a path for everyone else to follow.
This will help IITB to rise to the best in the world leaving the national crown to be shared by the other IITs. As old seasoned white haired professionals, we can sense a winner when we see one. For decades we have been sceptical about what the IITs could deliver.
But no more.
We can all see the change and sense and energies. These are winning energy fields all around. Now no problem is too hard or no objective too expensive. Frugality has been perfected and BharatGen type initiatives are showing that a frugality index of 100 is not just possible but practical. In simple language it means that IITB can do for a rupee what say a MIT or Stanford does for Rs 100.
It makes purchase power parity (PPA) look expensive. PPA tries to compare the cost of a burger in say NY with that in Mumbai and so on. PPA is approx Rs 50 which means that you can buy in India for Rs 50 what you can buy in USA for usd 1. So this means that a dollar will go roughly twice as far in India. But what IITB is showing is a PPA of Rs 1 (= 1 USD) when it comes to research in frontier areas.
This opens up unmatched possibilities not just for India but for the progress of mankind. It no longer makes sense to do research in USA or Japan or even China. This country beats them all. The immediate task at hand now is to accelerate rapidly from the usd 3 billion size of contract research to usd 300 bilion pa. At usd 300k equivalent output per researcher (done at a cost of usd 3k) – we need a million researchers yesterday.
Assume growth of 20% pa, and we need to add at least a 100,000 Phds in frontier technologies annually. We currently do less than 5000. That is a 20x increase. IITB produces more PhDs than any IIT and more than the combined PhD output of the new IITs. This has to change quickly.
And IIT needs to translate research into commercial output. This needs a two pronged approach. One is to take existing research and push it down the path of commercialisation. This is being done and done well.
But more important, we need to create an ecosystem to take a pressing problem and to develop a solution for that. BharatGen is one such entity – building a sovereign AI with an outlay of a billion dollars (equal to usd 100 billion in usa). But we have so many other problems to be solved. We have to rejuvenate our rivers, convert wastelands into agroforestry, solve air pollution in delhi, provide cheap air transport, prevent agri wastage and so on.
Iit Alumni Council is doing that but needs help. And competition.