EF made quite a few good points. The concern is not about usage of VC or PE funding schemes, which obviously is useful to overcome the current funding gaps, but the focus on deliberately and consciously excluding commodity-based industries from the tech focus. So, by taking out O&G and agri from the focus, the innovation is expected to come from other industries.
Key question if this is to be overcome – what are the indicators of our dependence on these commodity-based sectors. And what are the justifications for putting them back on the radar of the tech focus?
Qualitatively, obviously innovation has to occur within a domain, definitely not in a vacuum, as the timing of an innovation has to occur to overcome the current deficiency of a system. Now, that’s a key angle in terms of defining the market space.
A second angle is from the supply-side – looking at the broad infrastructure being put in place, there seems to be strong government support, better perhaps in intention than in execution, there is a basis for an existing strong regulatory system, creation of clusters and academic support, though taking all these in tandem it can still be considered relatively nascent. The key weakness at least now from my perspective, although it still has to be justified and strengthened is the quality of the human capital. The key issue at stake here is not the quantity but the quality of the development work.
At the heart of the consideration of the development stages being put in place is how best to nurture quality?
Can I start to examine that in terms of close working relations between industry and academia – how many of the current problems faced by the industry is actually being resolved by the academia? Or are they two separate parallel tracks?
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