IIM Bangalore (IIM-B) is hosting the first-ever India Conference on Innovation, Intellectual Property and Competition on December 7 and 8. According to a release by the institute, academicians, industry experts, innovation scholars, policy makers and practitioners from India, as well as overseas, are to take part in brain-storming sessions to discuss various aspects of innovation, IP and the competition ecosystem in India along with their transformational long-term impact on the country’s economy.
Talking about the relevance of the conference, Sourav Mukherji, Dean of Programmes at the insititute said, “As a country, we have a lot of innovative people…people with new ideas, but we are not an innovative nation. How do we bridge this gap? India is a complex country; innovation is very context specific. It does not stop with the new idea, along with that you need management processes. Can we tolerate risk? Can we make an assessment of risk? Is there a tolerance for failure in our environment? How much competition do we really allow? How do we protect intellectual property, and yet at the same time, worry about the millions of people who are economically underprivileged? This conference that we are organizing is an attempt towards starting this dialogue.”
Chirantan Chatterjee, Chair of the Conference Organizing Committee and Faculty Member at IIM Bangalore, adds, “India is at the cusp of transitioning in its innovation, IP and competition environment both in the digital and brick-and-mortar world. The conference is bringing together academics, policy makers and management thinkers to deliberate on what it is that can spur innovation and entrepreneurship in the Indian economy and reinvigorate, as our Prime Minister says, animal spirits , in the Indian economy.”
On December 7, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairperson of Board of Governors, IIM-B, is to deliver the inaugural address on ‘IPR and a Sustainable Start-Up Ecosystem in India’. The keynote address will be delivered by Harvard University professor Tarun Khanna on ‘Reimagining an Innovative India’.
The conference will feature special tracks on international innovation, India and economic growth; intellectual property rights, Indian innovation and Make in India; evaluating innovative activity: evidence from the patent office; competition and innovation; technology standards and innovation conversations for India and economic history of innovation, development and prizes.
Speakers include Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Professor, Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School; Lee Branstetter, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University; Ashok Chawla, Chairman, Competition Commission of India (CCI); Bhaskar Das, Group CEO, Zee Media Corporation Ltd.; Shaurya Doval, Director, India Foundation, Managing Director, Zeus Caps; Stuart Graham, Former Chief Economist, USPTO, Associate Professor of Strategic Management Scheller College, Georgia Institute of Technology; Kirti Gupta, Director of Economic Strategy, Qualcomm Inc; J. Bradford Jensen, Professor, Economics and International Business, McDonough School of Business Georgetown University; Zorina Khan, Professor of Economics, Bowdoin College, Visiting Faculty, London School of Economics; Dilipkumar Khandelwal, Managing Director, SAP Labs India Pvt. Ltd; Manoj Kumar Bhatt, Founder Director, Foundation for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship, Senior Advisor, Tata Trusts; Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman & Managing Director, Biocon India Limited, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIM Bangalore; Srinivas Prasad, CEO, Philips Innovation Campus; Inderpreet Sawhney, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Wipro Ltd; Mark Snyder, Vice President, Patent Counsel, Qualcomm Inc. and one of the most highly cited management scholars in the world, David J. Teece, Tusher Professor of Global Business, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
A round table on innovation in India featuring many of the above speakers is to be held on December 7 at 7 pm. The chairperson for the round table will be Professor David Teece, and he will be supported by Anupam Khanna, Former Chief Economist at NASSCOM as an anchor.
The conference will also include an unique conclave on ‘Women and Innovation in India’ with distinguished panelists like Deepa Bacchu, Founder and CEO at Pensaar, a design strategy and consulting firm; Suparna Bhattacharya, Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett-Packard; Deepanwita Chattopadhyay, Chairman & CEO at ICICI Knowledge Park, India; Debjani Kapila, CoE Leader-Patents and Analytics Center of Excellence, GE Global Research, GE India Technology Centre; Kajoli (Banerjee) Krishnan, Principal Scientist at GE Global Research and Leena Pishe Thomas, Director and Principal Consultant, Global Business Inroads. The panel will be moderated by noted economic historian B. Zorina Khan, Professor of Economics at Bowdoin College, LSE and NBER.