UK-India Collaboration – Focus: role of big business and academic R&D collaboration to support in international innovation

Continuing our series of guest blogs from our visitors, here’s a blog from Dr Nick Rousseau, Head of EU and International Innovation Policy within the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills , UK about his visit to India few weeks ago..

My role in the UK Government’s Innovation Directorate is to look at how we can facilitate international innovation collaboration with a focus on the major emerging economies.  Our relationship with India is entering a new phase which we recently discussed with Sam Pitroda, Indian Prime Minister’s Innovation Advisor on a visit to London.

I spent a week in India at the end of July with the SIN and UKTI teams with three main questions:  What are major businesses doing that relates to our desire to build more innovation collaboration – supplementary, how can Government support this? How can we build more business engagement into our jointly funded academic research? What is the dress code during the Monsoon in India?

I heard about a wide range of business-led R&D activities models, all extremely impressive and inspiring which included:

• At the launch of the Rolls Royce Open Innovation Challenge, I heard about how working with FICCI and NASSCOM was key to identifying a manageable number of high quality Indian businesses to participate, and I also visited their impressive new Joint Venture with HAL manufacturing engine components.
• I met Dinesh Verma leading BT’s healthcare team in New Delhi where they are actively working with a number of major hospitals around India to explore how the technology they have can be used to improve patient management and remote monitoring.
• I met Sunil Agarwal of Tata Capital in Mumbai to find out about the investments they are looking to make into companies with strong business propositions that can have a real impact addressing some of India’s most pressing challenges in areas such as water and energy management and healthcare – with a focus on supporting these businesses through linking them with Tata Group’s many companies and partners.
• I met Sudhir Nambiar, Shridhar Narayanan and Sunita d Sousa in Astra Zeneca’s R&D centre on the outskirts of Bangalore where I heard about their work to find cures for TB and other neglected diseases that are prevalent in India – working on a not-for-profit basis with the aim of making any solutions available for distribution via NGOs or the like.
• I met Rajesh Kalra and Jitesh Brahmkshatriya of the Atkins team in Bangalore who are working on how to support a number of Indian cities with increasing their sustainability.

These offer diverse “bridges” for UK or Indian businesses looking for partners and we hope to facilitate connections using some of the tools we are developing with partners such as the Technology Strategy Board, Department of Science and Technology – GoI, Indian Global Innovation and Technology Alliance and the UKIERI programme.

The UK’s Research Councils and various Indian Ministries are managing a portfolio of collaborative research more that £100m and they recently commissioned a study of how to increase knowledge transfer and other business engagement in this.  The answer differs considerably by research area and the next phase of work should focus on the perspective of the businesses already involved.

A number of partnerships evolved from these discussions, resulting in proposals for further collaboration between the UK and India. I believe that this is just the start of an exciting journey for us to explore making a big difference to people’s lives along the way. So, watch this space for new developments.

Regarding the dress code during the Monsoon, I also experienced the great diversity that is India with torrential rain in Mumbai, hot sticky days in New Delhi and, by my standards, ideal, warm weather in Bangalore with extremely predictable cloud bursts at 4pm. Suits are de rigeuer but the combination of air conditioning everywhere and office buildings with covered entrance areas meant I had very little need for an umbrella or the frequent changes of shirt I had anticipated!