Featured publication: “Made in India for the World”

Made in India for the World: An Empirical Investigation into Novelty and Nature of Innovations

Authors: Daniel Tobias Hagenau, Rajnish Tiwari

Abstract: After an initial introduction into the areas of innovations within emerging markets, the study develops a consistent innovation typology for categorizing large data samples from a variety of existing literature. It then describes and finally evaluates a sample of 178 innovations for the Indian market based on 38 different criteria. It uses internet-based news reports over a 2 year timeframe for the study sample.

TLead Market Indiahe study’s results show a considerable amount of radical innovations and innovations with disruptive potential among the sample and a special concentration on small- and micro-sized innovators from India. It confirms previous suggestions that India is especially focused on innovations within the software and electronics engineering sectors. The results also support the importance of local knowledge and ‘social capital’ for successful disruptive innovation. Finally, a perceivable increase in the technology orientation of innovations by foreign companies suggests a continuous build-up of local technology-competence and foreign trust in the same.

A focus on local competencies and the leading position of India concerning innovative distribution are among the managerial implication of the study. It also opens numerous avenues for future research, expanding both depth and scale of the database as well as the analysis underlying this study.

[Check the publisher’s version]

[Read the unedited, authors’ version]

Keywords: Frugal Innovation; India; Innovation Typology; Disruptive Innovation; Local Competencies 

Suggested citation: Hagenau D.T., Tiwari R. (2017) Made in India for the World: An Empirical Investigation into Novelty and Nature of Innovations. In: Herstatt C., Tiwari R. (eds) Lead Market India. India Studies in Business and Economics. P. 163-192, Springer, Cham

The featured publications series

With this article, CFI is introducing a new series of “featured publications” with the intention to share its select contributions to the social and scholarly discourse with the broad community. Some of these article have been published in mediums that are not freely available to the public. In such cases, we will seek to provide access to unedited, authors’ versions of the publications, wherever feasible.

Course on “Product Planning and Design for Frugal Innovations” at Santa Clara University

Prof. Herstatt teaching a SCU

Prof. Herstatt teaching a SCU

Taking the collaboration between Center for Frugal Innovation (CFI) and the Frugal Innovation Hub at Santa Clara University (SCU) to next level, we have developed a new course on “Product Planning and Design for Frugal Innovations” which is being offered currently to graduate students of the School of Engineering at SCU. The course has been developed by Prof. Dr. Cornelius Herstatt and Dr. Rajnish Tiwari and covers modern tools and methods for product design and development. It is based on a five phase stage-gate process model which integrates all major tasks that need to be paid attention to while creating new products and services. Continue reading

Talk with the All India Radio on Indo-German Collaboration in Technology

(clock-wise: Kaushik Roy, Stephan Buse, Rajnish Tiwari and Cornlius Herstatt; at the All India Radio in New Delhi. Photo courtsey: All India Radio)

(clock-wise: Kaushik Roy, Stephan Buse, Rajnish Tiwari and Cornlius Herstatt; at the All India Radio in New Delhi. Photo courtsey: All India Radio)

Recently, on a visit to India, the External Services Division of the All India Radio (AIR) expressed interest in speaking to Prof. Dr. Cornelius Herstatt, Dr. Stephan Buse and Dr. Rajnish Tiwari, to discuss the avenues of Indo-German collaboration in the field of technology. The time of the talk could not have been more appropriate as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel was then on an official visit in India leading a large delegation. There was a keen interest being expressed in the public space about Germany and Indo-German collaboration.

The resulting interview, of about 22 minutes’ duration, and touching on different aspects of collaboration, was broadcast on Sunday, 11th October 2015, in the program “Dateline Delhi”.

Photo & audio file courtesy: All India Radio.

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CFI in News…

Recently, the Times of India (Pune edition, July 4th, 2015) carried out a report on avenues of Indo-German partnership, especially in the field of startups and research. The article, titled “Indian startups, research ideas catch Germany’s eye” was written by Ms. Roli Srivastava, who was “in Germany on the ‘Media Ambassadors India ­ Germany’ fellowship programme of the International Media Centre and Robert Bosch Stiftung”. Ms. Srivastava paid CFI a visit and talked with Dr. Stephan Buse and Dr. Rajnish Tiwari on various aspects of Indo-German relations and especially on “frugal innovation”. One aspect of this talk centered on a partnership that CFI has forged with Prof. Aravind Chinchure, chair professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Symbiosis International University in Pune (India). Her visit to CFI was preceded by a talk by Dr. Rajnish Tiwari to the group of “Media Ambassadors India Germany” at the International Media Centre of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, on the following theme “Partnering in the technical field: Current status and future scope for Indo-German relations”.

The following excerpts are from Ms. Srivastava’s report:

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A case of frugal organizational innovation in governance!?

By: Rajnish Tiwari

Just noticed an interesting news item from India in The Economic Times of Oct. 22, 2014. The government has decided to put all replies to queries filed under the “Right to Information” (RTI) act online so that not only the person/organization having filed the query receives the information, but any interested person worldwide.

According to the report:

“Starting next month [i.e. Novemebr 2014], all replies given under RTI by ministries will be posted online, available for access to all and not just to persons seeking the information. This will mean unprecedented scale of disclosure and cheer transparency advocates […]. Until now, only the person filing the RTI application seeking replies from a ministry or a government department would get the reply and that too mostly via post.”

I imgaine that this move could be proably seen as a frugal innovation – an organizational innovation in the sense of the OECD/Eurostat definition of what an innovation is. By employing a high-tech/Internet-based solution the govt. can combat corruption while being able to dissemniate relevant information of public interest worldwide for almost no additional costs.

Read the complete news report: “Narendra Modi government takes RTI to another level: All replies to be put online” (Oct. 22, 2014), accessed: Nov. 2, 2014.