Chinese PM Seeks Indian Tech Cooperation

Yahoo! News ^ | Apr. 11, 2005 | S. SRINIVASAN,, Associated Press Writer

[FR_addict]

BANGALORE, India - China and India should work together to dominate the world's tech industry, bringing together Chinese hardware with Indian software, China's prime minister said Sunday.

On a visit to India's southern technology hub of Bangalore, Premier Wen Jiabao said the two nations should put aside their historic rivalries for the venture and welcome a new "Asian century."

"Cooperation is just like two pagodas (temples), one hardware and one software," Wen said. "Combined, we can take the leadership position in the world," he said.

"When the particular day comes, it will signify the coming of the Asian century of the IT industry," he said in an address to information technology professionals in Bangalore.

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Nokia, Philips, and Ericson are all second string players to Motorolla, Thomson, Lucent, Tellabs, etc. etc. And even the Europeans are better than India or China will ever be. Cheap labor equals cheap tech, period.

[indthkr]

"Like Europe, India does not have the culture to inspire great technologists, only the U.S. does."

A delusional statement to be sure! Quantum Mechanics (the underlying cornerstone of the microelectronics industry) was basically invented by the Europeans (Solvay Conference, 1927). If a certified nutcase by the name of Adolph Hitler hadn't caused a number of them to flee to the U.S., the history of information (and other) technology could have turned-out quite differently.

"you're saying nothing new about demographics in engineering schools, this has not changed for decades."

Complete BullS&#*.

While immigrants have historically made up a healthy percentage of Sci / Engr. students in U.S. graduate programs, the percentage has significantly increased over the last 10 to 15 years.

[indthkr]

"as a country we shouldnt dismiss threats / competition but acknowledge it and take measures to mitigate the threat."

Bingo! To quote Anderew Grove (Intel Chairman, and
European immigrant), "Only the paranoid survive".

[The Incredible One]

nokia is the leading player in the cell phone industry and has double the market share of motorola.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=30047#story-start

philips has a huge medical instruments division (as does Siemens )and i havent even completed the list yet. by the way LUCENT is not a company you would want to put money on. according to wall street

while i do want motorola, thomson and others to do well..i will not be subject to delusions of grandeur nor stereotyping a nation of 1 billion people. we need to concentrate on getting our education / value system up and running

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Cell phones are pretty much an assembly line job and neither Philips or Siemens come close to General Electric on medical tech. Take the top three European tech companies and compare their total revenue to the top three U.S. EU won't even be close. And like I said, Europe is better at tech than India or China will ever be. The true "delusion of grandeur" is thinking that big populations have any advantage other than cheap labor. The simple fact, cheap labor equals cheap tech.

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Semiconductors were invented in America by Americans, just like almost every other significant innovation in technology for over a hundred years (telephone, telegraph, phonograph, light bulb, microphone, etc. etc. all prior to WWII). The true delusional statement is "history of information (and other) technology could have turned-out quite differently." It didn't, and that has to do with far more than WWII.

[indthkr]

"Semiconductors were invented in America by Americans"

LMAO!

Semiconductors weren't "invented" anymore than Oxygen
was invented. They're a form of matter that can
occur naturally (Silicon, Germanium) as elements.

As far as who figured out why they work, try Enrico
Fermi (Italian).

Speaking of Italians, the radio (wireless communications)
was largely invented by Giuseppe Marconi (British Patent
Number 12039), based largely on the ideas of Nikola Tesla, who was from what is now called Croatia.

[TomasUSMC]

Some folks think ....Semiconductors weren't "invented" anymore than Oxygen
was invented. They're a form of matter that can
occur naturally

---

Humm, I wonder if H-Bombs are just a "form of matter" also?

[superiorslots]

Quote: Semiconductors were invented in America by Americans, just like almost every other significant innovation in technology for over a hundred years (telephone, telegraph, phonograph, light bulb, microphone, etc. etc. all prior to WWII).



Yeah but now every american company is sending or building R&D centers to India and china.

[Gengis Khan]

Have a look at these 4 articles for a more balanced view of innovations in India and her success and failures.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/aug/10ariban.htm
http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/aug/11ariban.htm
http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/aug/12ariban.htm
http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/aug/13ariban.htm

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LMAO!

Semiconductors weren't "invented" anymore than Oxygen was invented. They're a form of matter that can occur naturally (Silicon, Germanium) as elements.

Semiconductors have to be manufactured. Silicon and Germanium or any other element used in the manufacture of semiconductor has to be artificially "doped" with extra protons or electrons in order to act as a semiconductor. This was first done in America by Americans..

So, yes, semiconductors were "invented", they don't "occur naturally". But what does occur naturally is people who think they know everything about tech, who actually know almost nothing, saying that our industry is seriously threatened because another country has cheap labor. It happened in the 1980s with chicken little screaming that our computer industry was moving to Japan -- can't tell you how many times I heard that one. HP/Compaq, Dell, Micron, Gateway... Still using that NEC computer?

Please, tell me more about that huge Italian tech sector. And I love to learn more about booming technology in Croatia.

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now every american company is sending or building R&D centers to India and china.

Yesterday's news... Aforementioned Motorola has already given up on India and sold its India R&D operation off because it is useless. Other companies are learning this as well.

[Paul Ross]

Ping.

[Gengis Khan]

And yes, an "OS" isn't the best example (or the only example) of innovation. A lot of things are happening in a lot of fields such as medicine and agriculture outside the US which isnt immidiately visible to the American media or the public. The problem is a lot of investments are required to market it and make it public for a pirticular innovation to become "popular" or "useful". This more difficult to do in a country like India then in a country like US. While OTOH a lot of useless stuff like (the MS windows) gets passed around as "innovations".

BTW: India also has its own indigenously built super computer (Param), cryogenic engines, AIDS drugs and if you want to hear about Intels and AMDs try these:

http://news.helplinelaw.com/1104/d_busi-intel-india.php
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20040812033024.html

Biases and prejudices dont work in a global economy.

Read this article:
Innovation: Where has India succeeded and failed

August 12, 2004


Part I: Can India produce billion-dollar innovations?
Part II: How India can innovate like the US

In the third of this four-part series, Arindam Banerji discusses how can India start institutionalising innovation without resorting to large-scale changes that need huge political capital.

---

Before we get carried away, the key question here isn't one of trying to copy American practices into Indian circumstances. Nor it is a move to suggest that innovative ideas in India, must look like those in the United States.

The question is a much deeper one. Without resorting to large-scale changes that need huge political capital, how can we start institutionalising innovation in India?

What are the small steps that reachable people like Non-Resident Indians, Indian industrialists and some open-minded politicians can take on?

Where can we best focus our attention to get measurable forms of success in the short term, while relentlessly moving us forward towards the long term?

But first, we must understand what India is doing today towards institutionalising innovation.

Rural and Indigenous Innovations

One style of innovation that really works in a country as large and diverse as ours, is grassroots innovation: this includes inventions for a milieu that is quintessentially Indian.

These inventions are probably difficult to migrate from our culture, traditions and environment to that of other countries, but they are critical to how Indian ingenuity can be directly used to transform our circumstances, in ways that elite corporate research laboratories never can.

These rural and indigenous innovations come from two sources: first, farmers, semi-literates, illiterates, slum-dwellers who have managed to change things by marrying their own innate genius to their inherent understanding of ground conditions; and, second, innovations taken from more traditional sources such as universities and independent engineers that are then adapted back to suit Indian traditions and conditions.

Some key examples from the BBC and rediff.com include:

Balubhai Vasoya, from Ahmedabad in Gujarat has developed a stove that uses both kerosene and electricity. A six-volt electric coil heats the kerosene, converting it into gas which burns with a blue flame. It saves 70 per cent on fuel compared with conventional stoves running on LPG. 'One litre of kerosene lasts for eight hours; and in 20 hours, the stove uses one unit of electrical power. So running it for an hour costs one-and-a-half rupees in total. No smell, no smoke and it burns like LPG.'
Mansukhbhai of Gujarat could not afford to buy a tractor, so he created an Enfield diesel motorcycle with a difference: by removing the back wheel and replacing it with a spiked cylinder, his motorcycle now doubles as a tractor.
Anna Saheb Udgave, a 70-year-old farmer from the Sadalga village in Karnataka's Belgaum district, developed a low-cost drip irrigation system to fight water crisis in his village. He improved upon his innovation and turned it into a mega sprinkler, and called it Chandraprabhu Rain Gun. Other impressed farmers of the same village slowly started using Anna Saheb's rain gun in their farms. Now, the farmers of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka are also using it successfully.
Deepasakhti Pooja Oil, a blend of five different oils in a ratio prescribed in the Indian shastras does not produce any soot but gives a bright flame. It lasts longer and the fumes produced repel disease-causing bacteria. It is now being commercially manufactured by KP Castor Oil Works in Coimbatore.
A banana stem injector developed by Manoharan, a lathe owner of Batlagundu in Tamil Nadu, is similar to a syringe which can be used to inject pesticides into the psuedo-stem of the banana that is diseased. 'It helps manage indiscriminate pesticide application in banana cultivation, leading to a 20 percent cost saving in farming operations'
A manual milking device -- J S Milker -- is another innovation that has found acceptance in the rural areas. J S Milker is manufactured and marketed by J Support Industries headed by Joy John of Pothanicad, Kerala. J S Milker is a simple vacuum driven portable machine, which can be used to milk cows effortlessly. J S Milker is so successful in South India that RIN (see below) is planning to market it in Gujarat, where there are several milk co-operatives.
A solar water harvester conceived by Deepak Rao of Chennai has received a grant of Rs 190,000 from the Techno entrepreneur Promotion Programme of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. It uses solar energy to convert non-potable water into potable water. The product is still going on, and we are yet to commercialize it. From a 1 square metre model, we can have 5 litres of pure water per day. We are looking at it from a domestic point of view, especially in Chennai, where water scarcity is a big problem.
But, who is making sure that these innovations see the light of the day and help these innovators shed their cloak of obscurity?

Two key organisations are doing yeoman work in this direction:

The National Innovation Foundation, set up initially under Dr Mashelkar, is 'building a national register of grassroots innovation and traditional knowledge; it has set up a micro-venture innovation fund for individuals who have no bank account and who cannot produce any balance sheet and yet have innovations that warrant investment of risk capital.' NIF has set up a national innovation competition, for which the winners have included an eighth standard dropout, who developed a complex robot, the farmer who developed a unique cardamom variety and 'an illiterate individual, who had developed a disease resistant pigeon pea variety.'
RIN, Rural Innovation Network, is the brainchild of Paul Basil from Moovattupuzha in Kerala. The organisation focuses on promoting rural innovation-based enterprises and is a business incubator that turns grassroots innovations into commercial enterprises. 'RIN uses multiple points like Chennai's engineering colleges, agricultural universities, research institutions, patent offices, local fairs, exhibitions and banks to identify innovations. Once identified, RIN does a market research of the product to find out whether the idea is commercially viable. Then, they refine the products by making the innovations market-friendly, which means a lot of engineering work and overhauling.' In most cases, the innovator passes on the technology to an entrepreneur or a company for a royalty. So what is the role of RIN in this? 'We are just enablers,' says Basil. "We basically provide consulting inputs to, both, innovators and entrepreneurs. Our job is to tie the loose ends. There are several private entrepreneurs out there who want new products. We also help the entrepreneurs develop markets.' RIN now has 11 innovations that it is working on and wants to increase the number to 20 in the next one of two years.
The most successful product marketed by RIN till date is the rain gun, created by Anna Saheb. When RIN found the marketability of the product, they brought in the Chennai-based Servals Automation Pvt Ltd and the company signed a technology transfer agreement with Anna Saheb. Anna Saheb got a fixed royalty for his innovation, and RIN filed for a design registration (and marketing rights) of the rain gun.

Mumbai-based Aavishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund made an investment of Rs 800,000 to pick up a 49 percent stake in Servals Automation. According to RIN, this is the first such micro venture investment of its kind in India, if not the world over. So far, 60 rain guns worth Rs 200,000 have been sold.

Academia-Industry alliances
A calculation by the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, says 50 of India's 250-odd universities are active in academia-business liaisons. The interaction between academia and business can take many forms -- new start-up companies by academics, consultancies, joint ventures between commercial and academic organisations, and even 'blue-skies' projects that entail industry sponsorship of research in an area where the outcome is not clear.

Of these, institutional collaborations with industries are perhaps most common, such as:

Shantha Biotechniques funds research in academic centres as far apart as AIIMS, New Delhi, and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad.
IISC has about 400 collaborations, its partners ranging from Cadila (pharma) to HFCL (telecom).
The IIT-Delhi campus hosts labs for, among others, IBM, Tata Infotech, Motorola. Samsung India Electronics is working with IIT-Delhi for new designs of colour televisions, washing machines and air-conditioners to suit the Indian market. The company also plans to set up a consumer laboratory at IIT, where industrial designs students will work on projects sponsored by Samsung.
Scientists from the Amritsar-based Guru Nanak University provide quality control consultancy to textile and agro-based units, including food giant Nestle.
Minati Das of Dibrugarh University has set up a world-class research facility in petroleum technology -- along with the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Indian Oil Corporation -- which also provides technically qualified local manpower to ONGC and IOC.
FMC Corporation, a leading producer of chemicals for industry and agriculture, has established an R&D centre at the Indian Institute of Science campus in Bangalore, to drive research for its agriculture products business.
DuPont has had profitable alliances with national research laboratories under the CSIR, since 1994. DuPont Textiles and Interiors and the Pune-based National Chemical Laboratory have extended their research alliance for another five years. Dupont Polyester has entered into a strategic alliance with Reliance Industries to jointly develop advanced polyester process and product technologies in India.
Some of these alliances have re-written Indian scientific history. In Hyderabad, a contract between Shantha Biotechnique and CCMB led to India's first recombinant DNA-based vaccine, Shanvac, for Hepatitis B, transforming India's medical biotechnology industry. Midas Technologies, incubated by IIT Chennai's Tenet Group, proved that cheap rural connectivity could be married to a sound business plan. It made possible WLL, now adopted by many telecom companies. The returns are not limited to India. Software developed by the National Aeronautical Laboratory, Bangalore, determines aircraft landing frequency at British airports. -- India Today
Most big academic institutes now also have specific business development wings. IIT-Delhi's Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer, set up in 1992, was the first such wing at any IIT.

Seen as a prototype by other universities, it provides seed money and infrastructure support to a start-up for up to a year and such support for institutionalised innovation are beginning to yield results:

In 2001, four scientists from IISC -- Vijay Chandru, Swamy Manohar, Ramesh Hariharan and V Vijay -- proved they could successfully explore new frontiers beyond the realms of pure science. With an initial contract of Rs 1.5 crore, they launched Strand Genomics, India's first biotech company spun off from an academic institute. Today Strand Genomics has an office in San Francisco, investment of about Rs 22 crore and 100 employees. -- India Today
Five graduates and five professors at the computer sciences department in IIT-Delhi launched Kritical Solutions Private Limited a year ago with an initial seed funding of Rs 10 lakh. Their projects range from security solutions to sensor networks, many of them extensions of graduate theses. One project, looking at more effective, computerised screening of automobiles, could go a long way in preventing another attack like those in Mumbai recently. -- India Today
Other points of light

Finishing school for Innovation: 'NirmaLabs, an incubating initiative of Nirma Education and Research Foundation has established a fund of Rs 5 crore to support the incubation programmes. With a commitment of Rs 20 lakh per project as initial seed fund, the incubation programme enables participants to develop the concept further to a funding level. The programme is initially focusing on the IT, communication and entertainment sectors, with expansion in other sectors to soon follow. However, this is where this effort starts breaking off from other incubators.'

'NirmaLabs approach to incubation of high-technology, wealth-generating ventures is based on its ability to groom potential individuals to think differently with a global understanding of technology and markets and with sensitivity to challenges of high growth businesses. The three-staged programme commences with an eight-month grooming phase, during which the candidates will be groomed to identify an enterprising idea.'

'The incubation phase that follows soon will have mentors and venture capitalists acting as catalysts allowing the idea to be developed into a fundable enterprise. In the last phase, individuals will be allowed with opportunities for strategic networking.'

Co-ordinated research in strategic areas: Key strategic areas, where a national presence is required cannot be done in a handful of research labs or be looked into from a few angles only. One such area is the work on smart materials.

'Smart materials are the next frontier in engineering and manufacturing. What are they? Materials that respond to changes in temperature, moisture, pH, or electric and magnetic fields. Smart materials are poised to emerge from the lab in a wide range of medical, defense and industrial applications.'

'Understanding and using these advanced materials in your new product development efforts may make the difference between success and failure in today's intensely competitive markets.'

Nirupa Sen of JNU has put together an excellent article on the sum total of the work going on in India on smart materials, which gives us an idea of the spread of the research and the disparate angles from which this work is being carried out.

So, for example, design centres for smart materials include Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Solid State Physics Laboratory, Delhi, IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Bombay and IIT-Madras.

Manufacturing centres, include 1. Semiconductor Complex Limited, Chandigarh (which has a national foundry for MEMS devices), and 2. Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore (which is also being augmented for such purposes).

National Programmes of research in the area, include:

1. National Programme on Smart Materials -- NPSM is a joint programme run by DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation), through the Aeronautical Development Agency, Department of Space, Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Information Technology, and CSIR.

Aerospace has been identified as a major area of application of MEMS. The programme's aerospace division is concerned with R&D in devices used for sensing pressure, acceleration, rotational speed, temperature, strain, fibre-optic devices, actuators (piezo-ceramics, piezo-polymers, electro/magnetostrictive shape memory alloys, and the related chemicals and materials).

Currently, there are 30-odd research efforts funded across the nation under this program, in places like IITs, national labs and even smaller universities.

2. Development Initiative for Smart Aircraft Structures -- DISMAS: Executed by ADA, it is a five-year project sanctioned by DRDO in April 2001 at a cost of Rs 19.26 crore.

Areas of work are: Smart Health Monitoring; Vibration and Noise Control; Active Shape or flow control which is also known as Morphing; Conformal Antenna and Radome.

The Light Combat Aircraft has been identified as the platform of choice for developing and testing these concepts.

This is an example of how broad research areas must be attacked in a country like India -- the logistics of smart materials research in India is not a perfect example, but certainly a good one to start from.

It is not that we do not understand the need, but consider the meagre resources that we are putting into this:

The CSIR, under the leadership of 'CEO' R G Mashelkar, has now launched what he calls 'the largest post-Independence knowledge network,' the Rs 250-crore, five-year New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative. It aims at bringing together industry and academia to focus on innovation in 14 niche areas, including nanotechnology, climate modeling and fuel cell power. The idea is to make India a world leader in these areas. NMITLI is already working.

14 key areas and only 250 crore!

How do we expect to create an earth-shaking innovation every few years with this?

But, the broader question is where are the key gaps in our innovation infrastructure that India needs to fill in and how should we go about doing so?

More on this tomorrow.

Don't miss the final part of this series tomorrow: The path to Super-Innovation in India!

arindam_banerji@yahoo.com

Arindam Banerji is a scientist and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. He took the usual route of going from the IITs, through a PhD in the US, to finally working in sundry research labs.

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Have a look at these 4 articles for a more balanced view of innovations in India and her success and failures.

Interesting set of articles. They're all written by Indians about the reasons why India hasn't produced any real innovation in tech. None of them know the answer.

[Gengis Khan]

"They're all written by Indians about the reasons why India hasn't produced any real innovation in tech. None of them know the answer."

Take your time to read thru the articles. The answer is right there. Prolly you didnt find the answer you wanted to see.....which is: "Indians cant do it...they dont have it in them....shitty culture... blah blah"
Sorry but thats not the answer. Cant pick up your cultural supramacy bait.

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Biases and prejudices dont work in a global economy.

People sell the U.S. short because of "biases and prejudices", mostly embedded in them by anti-American leftist media. Go ahead and post all the "articles" you want, there's plenty of them out there written by people with anti-American "biases and prejudices". My assesment that India has accomplished nothing of substance in technology isn't a "bias" or "predjudice", it's a fact. Some big tech companies being run by people who don't really understand technology (they fawn over "intellectuals" like Thomas Friedman who also don't understand technology) are wasting their money in India. Niether AMD or Intel have gotten anything of value out of their India R&D operations. Give them time, they'll learn.

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Take your time to read thru the articles. The answer is right there.

No it's not. They spout all this nonsense about needing more money, academia-business cooperation, etc. etc... The "articles" you posted are whistling past India's technology grave yard. One more time, true innovation in technology requires people who are free to reap the reward of their effort, to work with other people of all kinds, to engage in and own creative enterprise. This is a fact no matter that you think that's "cultural supremacy". You should check your own anti-American cultural bias.

[Gengis Khan]

"Go ahead and post all the "articles" you want, there's plenty of them out there written by people with anti-American "biases and prejudices". "

---Your liberal leftist media didn't spare us either when a few jobs where outsourced here. Nothing new in a democracy. Check out the number of anti-Indian media out there. Thats again the media that tells you that India has achieved nothing. Ever wondered how a country of one Billion feeds itself? Today we are the largest producers of wheat and rice in the world. We produce enough surpluse to not only feed our own growing population but also export outside.
A lot of these actually succeded because of some home grown innovations. Some of them are even "home-made" technology. Come to think of it only a few of decades ago we were a basket case which faced one of history's worst starvation.

You see all innovations arnt necessarily "HI-TECH" all though we do have our own hi-tech stuff.

"My assesment that India has accomplished nothing of substance in technology isn't a "bias" or "predjudice", it's a fact. Some big tech companies being run by people who don't really understand technology (they fawn over "intellectuals" like Thomas Friedman who also don't understand technology) are wasting their money in India. Niether AMD or Intel have gotten anything of value out of their India R&D operations. Give them time, they'll learn."


Value my friend lies in the eyes of the beholder! Give them time and they will produce. We DO have a lot of home-grown technology in the field of medicine, agriculture, satellite technology, defense, supercomputers and nuclear energy (stuff that US was not ready to give us but we built our own) stuff that you may not have heard of or are worthless to you, but they are life saver for us. All this comming from a country that was not so long was ranked alongside Ethiopia.

[Gengis Khan]

"No it's not. They spout all this nonsense about needing more money, academia-business cooperation, etc. etc... The "articles" you posted are whistling past India's technology grave yard. One more time, true innovation in technology requires people who are free to reap the reward of their effort, to work with other people of all kinds, to engage in and own creative enterprise. This is a fact no matter that you think that's "cultural supremacy". You should check your own anti-American cultural bias."


---My posts are "Pro-Indian biases" which YOU choose to read as "anti-American cultural bias". Cant help you my friend. You might find it surprising that out here my friends call me a "pro-American".

Looks like you have just glanced over the article. The kind of "hi-tech" innovations that you have in mind need a lot of investments and marketing ....again not easy for a country like India when compared to the US. For every 1 success there are a million failures. More so for a country that has just entered the arena. Hence...... I wont be so quick to judge!