FreshNetworks Blog

An interesting panel session discussing whether collaborative innovation is something that the western world is privileged and developing countries cannot. Sam Pitroda commented that innovation has always been used to solve rich people’s problems, despite them not really having any problems at all. This may be true. Indeed the brain drain from countries such as India is in part reflecting the fact that the brightest brains in India are not solving their own domestic problems, but working in Wall Street banks.

This thesis is opposed to some extent with the oft quoted phrase amongst western politicians and leaders that we need to innovate in order to compete with the likes of India, China, Brazil and others. This view seems counter-intuitive. Global businesses, as Helen Alexander for the Economist points out, operate globally. They cooperate across boundaries and are intrinsically set up to make the best of the resources available to them, wherever they might be.

Our sister company, FreshMinds Research, did some work a couple of years ago for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the UK on the science and technology links that existed between India and the UK. We found that those that were most successful were often those the governments knew nothing about. Perhaps Helen Alexander was right when she said the best thing the government could do for innovation was to stay out of the way.