India in the next 30 years will be in the top three countries in innovation and will drive global solutions for tomorrow due its entrepreneurial mindset, ongoing structural changes, move towards a formalised economy, expert on market competitiveness Amit Kapoor has said.
Kapoor, who has authored NITI Aayog's 2019 India Innovation Index, said certain factors already in motion will help India become an innovation hub.
"One is the structural changes that are happening in the system right now. India's becoming more formalised as an economy, people are competing against a global system. That is going to drive a lot of change.
"The second thing is that the Indian education or the entrepreneurial mindset. The entrepreneurial mindset in India is amazing," he said.
According to Kapoor, who is the chair of Institute for Competitiveness, India, the challenges that the Indian system provides propels one to become very innovative and find unique solutions.
"I'm convinced in my mind that India is going to be amongst the top two or three countries from an innovation perspective in the next 30 years," Kapoor told PTI in an interview.
Whatever happens in India today will actually get implemented or seen in a positive light by countries in say Africa, they will actually learn from it, he said.
"What you're seeing is that you're creating solutions which are driven by very local, challenges and they are hugely scalable. So, India is going to be the driver of change in the future. It is not going to be any other countries," said Kapoor.
He said the cycle for innovation in India started in 1980s itself.
In NITI Aayog's Innovation Index all states are ranked on innovation and competitive parameters.
Kapoor said the idea behind the index is to propel the country towards innovation.
"What sells here in the US need not necessarily be a big thing in India. You would have services which are localised for India. India will find its own mobility solution, will find its own service solutions for various things that are actually happening and that is what is going to happen," he said.
United States, he said, will always be one of the countries that will be driving innovation. "This is because of the technological focus that this country has actually had. The second would be the Scandinavian group of countries which will be driving innovation," he said.
He said China would also be part of the innovation future.
"China is a more scaled economy. I do not really see China as a very innovative economy. In fact, whatever is happening in China, I see there's a replication of lots of things that happen in the US," he said.
At the same time, he acknowledged the Chinese create some amazing scalable solutions.
Their innovation capacities is in scale, scaling that manufacturing and providing services.
"Something what is required in India is different from what is required in China. That is what is going to happen here. Chinese solutions will not get replicated across the world. Indian solutions, because they are going to be service-oriented solutions, will get replicated across the world," Kapoor said.
While asserting India has grassroot innovations, Kapoor said the challenge would be to scale those solutions and innovations.
"So, if India is able to create scale, India is going to be beating the world," he said, exuding confidence that India will create scale in services what China has been able to do in the manufacturing sector.
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