It is now increasingly recognised that for a truly resilient and atmanirbhar Viksit Bharat, R&D will be the foundation. A Bharat that is capable of adapting to rapid global changes, while ensuring sustainable progress, through cutting-edge technological superiority. R&D fosters innovation, a culture of scientific inquiry, curiosity and continual learning.

However, data shows that our gross expenditure in R&D (GERD) is a meagre 0.7 per cent of GDP and has remained so for a long time. In the next 6-7 years alone, we will have to quadruple GERD as a per cent of GDP to reach developed country benchmarks of 2.5 per cent. Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) are a method for understanding the technical maturity of any technology. In the 1990s, NASA adopted a scale with nine levels, which gained widespread acceptance across industry.

In today’s start-up world, the evolution of an idea could be at the college café. However, from then on, systematic addressing of TRLs is required, allowing a technology to evolve from conception, to research, development and deployment. As a rule-of-thumb, universities, along with government funding, work on TRLs 1-3 or 4, while the private sector focuses on TRLs 7 or 8-9.

The Valley of Death (VoD) metaphorically describes the riskiest and longest phase in this graded scale, normally TRLs 3-7, where promising research fails to transition into commercial products, because neither academia nor industry prioritise investment in this phase. The technology can even become obsolete or outdated; classic examples are the Pager or Blackberry phones. Also, despite having the financial muscle, some companies miss the point that one cannot keep milking the same technology. Examples include the Google-Glass, Apple-Newton, Twitter-Peek.

Navigating the Valley of Death: Developing a product for the 21st century market is very different from what it was for the early 20th century market, where innovation was largely driven by necessity rather than convenience or luxury.

The current market seeks perfection in the product. In such cases, unfortunately, the risks involved often outweigh the incentives for research. There are always exceptions, of course.

While there is a lot being done, the following ideas need to be further scaled up manifold, with government facilitation, for real impact.

Embedding a culture of innovation in our academic system: The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has taken a big first step in providing multi-disciplinary education through a flexible curriculum to facilitate creativity and critical thinking, which will encourage innovation. This is radically different from the rote-based learning that prevailed for decades.

However, we have to go much further. As an example, the curriculum in the West encourages working with one’s hands — that is, designing and building models from the very early stages of the education journey. This is a crucial step in the formative years that fosters a culture of innovation.

Secondly, in most Western universities, there is a fine balance between scholarly research leading to high quality journal publications, and innovation leading to product development. Often, in our context, product development is not considered scholarly work. This requires a cultural change.

Striving for perfection when it really matters: Since the academic current curriculum focusses on perfection, i.e., 100 per cent marks all the time, academicians tend to perfect innovation at the concept stage (TRL 1-3) itself, thus putting unnecessary constraints on the subsequent stages (TRL 4-7), enhancing the probability of succumbing to the VoD.

Perfection is often not needed during the initial stages of technology development, but is the most important driver for a successful product in the later part of the innovation journey (TRL 8-9).

Our academic system should, therefore, assist students to identify stages when perfection really matters, so that we leave adequate space for creative and disruptive thinking.

Perfection and innovation are perhaps two opposite sides of the same coin. Innovation drives perfection and when perfection is perceived to be achieved, innovation ceases to exist.

Identifying and nurturing talent early: As we do through a robust domestic programme in cricket, we need to identify talent for innovation, early in a student’s or researcher’s life. From then on focussing on building their strengths and honing their skills.

In the West, there are science-based entertainment programmes like ‘Invent it Rich’ and ‘Junkyard Wars’, which reward innovation. Since innovation is embedded into the socio-economic fabric of their society, there is a greater tendency for young minds to think innovatively, without the fear of being ridiculed on failing. Stigmatising failure kills the appetite for research.

Therefore, a stepping stone to success in research is to first weave acceptance of failure into our socio-economic structure.

Strengthening industry-academia partnership: Presently, neither the academic curriculum nor industrial R&D exposure provides the relevant training or experience to tide over technologies lying in the VoD.

The West, along with South Korea, Japan and China, have all figured out how to overcome this issue. Even countries less known for their R&D capabilities, like Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia, appear to be ahead, despite having fewer globally recognised educational institutes compared to our IITs or the IISc.

Establishing innovation clusters that bring together academic institutions, industry players, and start-ups can foster collaboration. An excellent example is the Ministry of Heavy Industries funded industry accelerator Samridhi and start-up incubator CAMRAS at IISc, Bengaluru; or the FITT, at IIT Delhi.

The CII has established a separate national forum for promoting industry-academia partnership for R&D and innovation for precisely this purpose.

Enhancing funding mechanisms that recognise risk: The role of government grants and funding is critical, especially to tide over the VoD, as the VoD involves developing multiple prototypes, supply of demonstration units, design rectification and redesign, market studies, potential of the product for exports, etc. Failures could lead to returning to the drawing board to revisit the entire design.

Such unforeseen risks can potentially sink a company. Government policies, therefore, need to cater for these aspects, else the natural tendency is to favour low risk innovations.

In fact, all government funded projects must have at least an equal number of successful and failed projects, to be considered successful on an overall basis. Else, external perception will be that only a large number of low-risk projects have been funded. This is where the role of Project Monitoring and Review Committees (PRMCs) becomes pivotal. PRMCs must ensure that they encourage projects that have significant risks associated with them, as long as they contribute significantly to the benefit of the nation.

To conclude, navigating the journey from the lab to the market is littered with challenges. Nevertheless, once innovation is deeply embedded in the DNA of our nation, we can quite easily navigate the Valley of Death, to realise the dream of creating an atmanirbhar Viksit Bharat by 2047.

Sondhi is Chairman, Technical Committee for CAMRAS at ARTPARK, IISc, Bangalore, and former MD and CEO, Ashok Leyland; Kumar is Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research, IISc. Views are personal

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