IBM (The Great Innovator) Tells India: You Are Not Innovative
May 22, 2017
I don’t know much about India. I have interacted with a handful of Indian entrepreneurs over the years. I owned a bit of a company set up and managed by a fellow from India. He struck me as bright and, I suppose, the word “innovative” suits him. I also spent a little time with the entrepreneur who created Aglaya. This is an outfit which has some technology which struck me as innovative if you think performing wireless intercepts when a person of interest is going about their daily routine innovative. I have had other bump ups over the last 40 years. These ranged from bright nuclear engineers at Halliburton Nuclear to chipper MBAS with good idea when I worked at the fun factory Booz, Allen & Hamilton to the assorted engineers I encountered in my other work.
To sum up, Indian engineers are not much different from engineers from other countries. I assume that parental guidance, curiosity, and being intelligent were the common factor. Country of origin was not exactly a predictor in my experience.
Well, gentle reader, that’s not how IBM perceives innovation from an entire country if the data in “New Study Finds 90% Of Indian Startups Will Fail Because Of Lack Of Innovation” is on the money. IBM allegedly learned that because India (now that’s a generalization) is not innovative, Indian start ups will fail. Pretty remarkable finding from the company which has tallied five years of declining revenue and the wonky Watson Lucene-based confection.
Innovative? IBM and its researchers are convinced that their work is changing the world. Don’t believe me? Ask Watson. I would not ask a shareholder.
I learned from the report about IBM’s research:
India might have become the third largest startup ecosystem, but it lacks successful innovation.
India is a big country. Doesn’t it seem likely that some individuals would attempt to start new firms instead of trying to get a job at the local bank?
IBM and Oxford Economics found that
90% of Indian startups fail within the first five years. And the most common reason for failure is lack of innovation — 77% of venture capitalists surveyed believe that Indian startups lack new technologies or unique business models.
Yeah, but don’t startups have a high mortality rate? Don’t the business models track with legal ways to generate revenue widely used by other countries’ entrepreneurs? Heck, most patents are stuffed with references to prior art? The innovation is the cuteness of the wording in the claims in many cases, right?
You think this is innovative? You are uninformed. IBM’s study verifies the lack of innovation in India. Tear this allegedly innovative building down. Go with an IBM glass “instant building.”
Not only are those Indian entrepreneurs unimaginative when it comes to making money, IBM’s study reports:
Other reasons cited for failure include lack of skilled workforce and funding, inadequate formal mentoring and poor business ethics, according to the study. It’s well known that most Indian startups are prone to emulate successful global ideas, by and large fine tuning an existing model to serve the local need…
With more than a billion people, it seems logical to focus on the market at hand.
But IBM’s data seems to impugn India for other faults; for example:
India doesn’t have meta level startups such as Google, Facebook or Twitter….Unsurprisingly, in 2016, Asian Paints was the only Indian organization in Forbes’ 25 most innovative companies, and Gillette India was among Forbes Top 25 Innovative Growth companies.
Ah, ha. The capitalist tool Forbes includes only one company called by the surprisingly American moniker Gillette India (very creative indeed) is on the Forbes Top 25 innovative growth companies.
A guru may be the source of this insightful comment:
Even in evolving AI technology, Indian entrepreneurs are not pioneers.
But IBM sees the sun peeking through the heavy Indian clouds:
The IBM report adds that while strong government promotion of entrepreneurship has strengthened the startup culture, India’s economic openness and large domestic market are significant advantages.
What’s with IBM and its somewhat negative discussion of India? Is there an IBM Watson skeleton in the Big Blue closet wearing an IBM Watson t shirt? Did IBM’s own initiatives in India fail? Did a senior IBM executive have a bad experience at the decidedly non creative Taj Mahal? Maybe an Indian rug did not match the interior designer’s vision for Armonk carpetland?
That odd ball digit zero. I had a math professor or maybe it was my half crazy relative who may have contributed some non creative ideas to the Kolmogorov Arnold Moser theorem who told me that some Indian number crunchers cooked up the idea of a zero. IBM’s report suggests that Brahmagupta’s use of computation with the zero was definitely not innovative. I assume that means my crazed relative was innovative, not autistic, anti social, and usually lost in mathematical wonderland.
IBM is familiar with zeros. That’s the symbol I associate with IBM Watson’s contribution to IBM financial future. IBM is, of course, more innovative. It has lots of patents. Revenue growth? Nah, just money to spend proving that India’s start ups work pretty much like any other country’s start ups. Lots of failures.
Final thought: Why didn’t IBM just ask Watson about India. Why involve humans at all? By the way, where’s IBM’s Alexa, its Pixel phone, or its Facebook social network? Watson, Watson, are you there or just pondering life as an non innovative zero?
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2017
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