ICT can power affordable and sustainable innovation

At a time of growing scarcity of resources, more frugal and ecologically aware customers are forcing enterprises to radically rethink their innovation strategies

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘innovation’ as the phenomenon of change through the introduction of new methods, ideas or products, to which Wikipedia adds that ‘Indovation’ is “the unique process by which innovations are developed in India to serve a large number of people affordably and sustainably in response to conditions of scarcity and diversity.”

In the World Economic Forum’s report — Using Information and Communication Technologies to Boost India’s Competitiveness — released on November 11, Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu of the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, write about the importance of ‘Indovation’ in a box item.

The two write that in the aftermath of recession, and at a time of growing scarcity of resources, more frugal and more ecologically aware customers are forcing enterprises to radically rethink their innovation strategies and business models. Business executives are being compelled to develop new value propositions that generate more value for less cost for more people.

To effectively deliver this new value proposition, companies need to drastically reinvent their products, services, and business models by embracing a radically different approach that is frugal, inclusive, sustainable and collaborative. Current innovation strategies and business models are primarily structured to cater for affluent markets — and presuppose the permanent availability of abundant financial and natural resources.

“We believe that India provides a great source of inspiration for driving affordable and sustainable business innovation enabled by open, collaborative partnerships,” say Radjou and Prabhu.

India is already a microcosm of the world of scarcity, diversity, liberty, and connectivity that will be the future of all nations. The country, with its large and growing population, faces scarcity on a grand scale across the board: from water and food to oil and gas to primary education and basic healthcare.

Because of its inherent environmental and social constraints, India is a place where the need to get more value for less cost has been felt for a long while now. Increasingly, this scarcity has combined with India’s diversity, its relative liberty and growing mobile phone connectivity to turn it into a large-scale laboratory where social entrepreneurs and for-profit corporations are coming up with inventions — or indovations — that are both affordable and sustainable. These indovations have relevance not only within the Indian context, but also in other global markets.

Many such indovations leverage the power of information and communication technologies (ICT) — especially mobile connectivity, given the fact that India is home to 670 million mobile phone subscribers — to deliver more value at less cost for more people. Unlike in the West, where ICT applications are typically first adopted by businesses before entering the consumer domain, many ICT solutions developed in India are squarely aimed at the masses. 
 

INNOVATIONS THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE
Five companies have come up with ICT-enabled ‘indovations’

• Nokia Ovi Life Tools harnesses SMS technology to deliver localised and timely information to farmers in their native language on weather conditions, advice about crop cycles, market prices for crops, and seeds and fertilisers, in addition to general farming tips — for just Rs 60 a month, and there are already 1.5 million subscribers in India. 
• YES Bank has partnered with Nokia and Obopay, a mobile payment platform provider, to deliver mobile banking services to even the remotest areas of India. YES Bank’s solution allows semi-urban and rural Indians to use their mobile phones to send, save, and spend money throughout the country safely and cost-effectively, without even having a bank account.
• Everonn operates the world’s largest education network based on VSAT (very small aperture terminal) satellite technology. Its VSAT-enabled virtual and interactive classrooms deliver high-quality content to hundreds of thousands of students of all ages all across India. It currently serves 1,567 institutions, many in Tier II and Tier III cities where teacher absenteeism is high. Everonn is now offering educational content via mobile phones too.
• GE Healthcare developed Vscan, a portable, battery-operated, cardiac ultrasound machine, after extensive market research conducted with physicians in rural India who needed easy-to-use medical devices. By connecting the Vscan to an Internet-enabled computer or even a mobile phone, images captured by a technician in a far-flung village can instantaneously be transmitted to a doctor in a distant city for analysis and diagnosis. 
• Tata Consulting Services (TCS), India’s largest software exporter, offers small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) affordable software solutions based on cloud computing -- “an Internet-based technology through which information is stored in servers and provided as an on-demand service to clients.” TCS’s cloud computing services can lower SMEs’ total cost of ownership by 40 per cent, allowing them to boost productivity and competitiveness relatively inexpensively.