Innovation in India Pt 2 | Rise of Innovation in Pakistan?

As a follow-up to my earlier India study I thought we could discuss BusinessWeek’s article summarizing innovation in India:

Not all analysts are convinced Indian R&D operations are ready to assume the lead in innovation, however.

Martin Kenney, a University of California at Davis economist who has studied offshore R&D in India and China, agrees the trend is still growing in India and that its workforce is becoming more experienced and innovative. Since 2000, he notes, U.S. patents awarded to inventors filing from India rose more than fivefold, to around 550 a year.

But the number of India patents remains very small in the scheme of things: Last year the U.S. issued nearly 94,000 patents. And Kenney suspects the vast bulk of India’s engineering hordes still is far too green to do complex design and innovation work.

“Bangalore is not like Silicon Valley, where in a couple of weeks you can round up 10 people who have already designed chips at three different startups,” he says. “We don’t really yet know much about the true quality of the work done there. There are company anecdotes going both ways. Some of it may not be what it is cracked up to be.”

A ratio of 550 : 94,000 is pretty compelling. Development of those 94k patents is another issue altogether. It still seems that there’s not enough competition within India to create that stress that true innovation requires. Stress is good; it makes for the best environment for change and that means innovation.

There is, notably, plenty of stress within Pakistan.

Pakistan: The New India?

Personally I think that the India outsourcing model is going to move eastward in the next decade or so. Just like Korea did to Japan, like China did to Japan and Korea, Pakistan is close enough to benefit from India’s success if it’s sharp on timing and coherent enough to grasp the advantages.

From BusinessWeek: What Now for Pakistan? – Pakistanis Ready for Change

Lost in the chaos of Monday’s [Musharraf] resignation was the fact that Pakistan’s economy has the right fundamentals to mirror the kind of growth that neighboring India has enjoyed.

With a large, English-speaking population, vast pools of engineering students, and a youthful population, Pakistan could become an economic powerhouse under the right conditions, says Agha Imran Hamid, a development consultant with the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Channeled correctly, the innovation within Pakistan could easily displace India as a top seated outsourcing destination. Should this be encouraged over the next twenty years, Afghanistan and Pakistan could jointly provide the equivalent of India’s developing 1990s era prosperity and knowledge management.

Additionally, the ’stan pipeline (originating in Turkmenistan) bringing natural gas down through Afghanistan and Pakistan for end use in India provides well needed and consistent hard currency to both the Afghan and Pakistan.

With India now a valuable trading partner to Pakistan, things should calm down with that whole Kashmir region dispute.  While Afghanistan still has challenges, following a template from Pakistan could be just what it needs. That and distributed power sourced from natural gas. 

Didn’t know about the pipeline?

Funny how you don’t hear about things like that often in the media these days, and yes, positive things are still being done even with the current disruptive situation.

Related Articles

Is India (Outsourcing) Winning?

The State of Innovation in India | STC India’s Salary Surveys | Adobe’s India Investment