Prof. Amartya Sen delivered the valedictory keynote on how IITs, IITians and PanIIT can Inspire, Innovate, and Transform India into a global superpower.

It was a pleasure listening to the views of Nobel Prize winner Prof Amartya Sen. He was the only speaker who received a standing welcome. The hall (SAC) was jam packed – we had to move around to find empty seats.

Dr Ajit Ranade (Group Chief Economist at Aditya Birla Group), welcomed and introduced Prof Sen. Dr Ajit’s introduction about Prof Sen was rambunctious. Some of the interesting points from the introduction:

1. Rabindranath Tagore is said to have given Amartya Sen his name (”Amartya” meaning “immortal”)
2. Dr Manmohan Singh was fellow to Prof Sent at Cambridge University
3. Prof Sen received Bharat Ratan, India’s highest civilian award in 1999
4. Many of the statements made by Prof Sen are considered conventional wisdom today. E.g. ‘Famine is not caused by the shortage of the food but by the lack of purchasing power’

Prof Sen’s 75^th birthday (which was on Nov 3, 2008) was celebrated again in the traditional Indian style (he was honoured with Tilak and Shawl) at the PanIIT 2008 conference.

Prof Amartya Sen started his talk by acknowledging the history and contribution of the IIT movement, which was started in 1951 by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Pandit Nehru always believed that ‘Education’ must be the foundation for India’s progress and IITs contribution to the nation building is a testimony to that.

Talking on the role of IIT system in the nation building, he reiterated the theme of the PanIIT 2008 conference:

“Inspire. Innovate. Transform”

He also highlighted and raised concerns about fundamental problems of India – hunger, illiteracy, lack of medical care. He shared his astonishment on the current state of these issues in India. Talking on the potential of IIT System and IIT Alumni, he stated that Technology can and should play its deserved role in solving these issues.

Prof Sen advocated an approach to problems based on ‘nyaya’ rather than ‘neethi’. He described ‘neethi’ as a mere set of rules and ‘nyaya’ as the fair outcome and realization of the benefits of law. Talking further on this approach, he gave the example of argument between Arjuna and Krishna in the Geeta. Finally, Arjuna lost the argument. He said that the ‘Matsyanayaya’ (i.e. the big fish eating small fishes) should be prevented in order to ensure justice and equality.

Prof Sen said that IITs had not only achieved in terms of technology, but also ushered in a culture of ‘getting things done’. He said that the country needs the contribution from the IIT System and IITians at a lower level, at the level of schools and primary health care. With innovativeness, intelligence, sympathy and, utlimiately, humanity, there is a lot that IITians (students, alumni and facultly), and those trained and influenced by them can do.

Prof Sen’s Valedictory note was then followed by engaging Q & A. Of course time couldn’t justice to the huge number of questions, which were being asked by the people who were delighted to hear his views.

An appropriate parallel was drawn before the introduction to Prof Sen’s session – if PanIIT 2008 were a 50 over match and the sessions by Prof C K Prahalad & Tata CEOs, by Prof Stephen Cohen & Prof Kishore Mahbubani represented the slog overs, the speech by Prof Amartya Sen was the winning shot.

To capture the mood and delegate’s experience at the event, we’d the opportunity to interview a variety of audience throughout 3 days. Here is the experience shared directly by the participants at the PanIIT conference:

Sanjay Jadhav (IIT Mumbai, 1989 B. Tech)

1. Networking at PanIIT 2008 was great – we got valuable encouragement and guidance from other IIT Alumni.
2. We got lots of contacts for further Business Development
3. The way event was managed was exceptional

Answering to ‘what could have been done to make the event even better’, they said:

1. Many of the VCs who were earlier planned to be part of business plan competition were not present
2. Couldn’t attend some of the interesting sessions due to parallel sessions

Kirti Sahni (Project Associate at IBEF – Exhibitor at IITech Expo)
“Given the diversity & quality of the audience (including co-exhibitors), the networking opportunities are great at PanIIT 2008”, said Kirti at the IBEF booth. She was also happy for the fact that IBEF was part of the IIT Alumni Impact study. As responded by other delegates, Kirti also commended the efforts of the PanIIT 2008 organizing body for successfully executing such a big event.

Anurag Rastogi (IIT Delhi, BTech 1999)
Anurag had all the praise for:

1. Quality of speakers and the sessions. He particularly liked the session of Prof Prahalad with Tata CEO’s and highly admired their views
2. Networking (with cocktails) session on the 2^nd day.

He wished if there were more people from North (particularly IIT Delhi).

Sriram Panchanathan (Manager, Digital Operations @ Amazon – another exhibitor at IITech Expo)
When asked, “what did you like about the PanIIT 2008?”, Sriram listed:

1. Visibility/branding opportunity – for Amazon as a Technology company
2. Logistics – highly successful management of the event
3. Quality of the audience

Sriram couldn’t point out even a single negative factor for the event

Thomas Verghese (IIT Delhi, B Tech 1997)
Thomas’s experience at PanIIT 2008 was not an exception – he thoroughly enjoyed reliving the IIT experience at PanIIT 2008. He said that it was wonderful meeting old mates at PanIIT. He also liked the networking (with cocktailsJ) and appreciated the event’s organizers efforts in superbly reorganizing the networking session at a new venue, after it was cancelled on the 1^st day.

One thing he didn’t like was the fact that he needed travel long distances in moving from one venue to another for attending various sessions.

The success of the PanIIT 2008 was evident from the fact the President of India (from her office in Delhi) sent a congratulatory note to the organizers expressing her happiness on the contribution of PanIIT in the nation building exercise.

Arjun Malhotra moderated the “Knowledge Capture” session in the early morning of the last day of PanIIT 2008. This session was aimed at capturing the accomplishments of PanIIT2008.

PanIIT 2008 started with inaugural speech of Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India. He highlighted 3 key areas where IIT Alumni body needs to focus its attention:

1. Strengthen faculty and Research
2. Include current Social Issues
3. Take the current work to the masses

Anjun while summarizing the session mentioned that the major difference in PanIIT 2008 conference as compare to PanIIT 2006 is the fact that now are talking about scaling up existing projects, while earlier our focus was to initiate existing projects. This year we are having the conversation about how can PanIIT help in the scale up process. The key areas of work in which projects are going on includes Skills, Education and IIT Impact Studies.

Arjun Malhotra summaries the outcome of the conference in following 10 points:

1. We don’t tell others about the good work that we are doing. We need to create a marketing ecosystem to share knowledge between IITs and IITians
2. Regarding Empowerment of women and initiative taken to eradicate poverty, lots of discussions have happened during PanIIT 2008. Now we should start thinking of creating the policies around that.
3. There are lots of initiatives going on in the Rural Development area. We need to setup best practices to streamline the efforts.
4. Technical Education: IITs have major responsibility in this area. They already have lots of good quality content. We need to come up with ways to distribute it further.
5. Incubators: We should try to enhance the services of incubation centers in IITs. They should include services like Legal, Marketing, Business Strategy etc.
6. PanIIT can help in reviewing the existing curriculum. It has somewhat become static and is not keeping with the changes happening the industry. For example we need to include the needs of the Infrastructure Industry.
7. IUCEE is a major step in training the faculty of other institutions. 600 faculty members of other institutions are already been trained. IUCEE plan to train 80,000 faculty members in future.
8. Reach 4 India – basic skill training for rural youth in welding, house-keeping, driving, etc is a major step forward in the direction of rural transformation project taken up by PanIITs.
9. IITians for ITI – A major step forward in the direction of improving the quality and quantity of technician in India
10. In this year conference, nearly 2000 IITians have shown interest in being the volunteers for the event!!!

Last to last year we ended the conference in Mumbai, thinking of big projects that PanIIT can take. We also mutually decided that we will educate one child individually. Arjun urged everyone to look back and see whether we have done that or not and how far we have reach.
In the end Ashank Desai mentioned that every project needs a champion to drive the initiative. There are lots of projects that we have already identified. We need to create Champions. In case anyone is interested in any project be the champion first.

Oct 20: Two noted strategic thinkers-Stephen Cohen and Prof. Kishore Mahbubani from NUS, Singapore-will discuss the strategic challenges and opportunities ahead of India in the next 15 years.

Kishore Mahbubani is the author of the new book The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Power to the East, available early 2008, as well as Can Asians Think? and Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World.

Kishore Mahbubani started the session by stating his geopolitical views about the current situation the world is dealing with. He said that in the area of geopolitics there are no real experts. Moreover you can ague literally anything in this domain. We can argue that even in last 3000 years nothing has changed regarding the geopolitical situation of the world. At the same time we can also argue that everything has changed.

Argument: Everything has changed

In the past, we have notices that any major shift of power in world leads to tension between the world’s greatest power and the world greatest emerging power. Few years back we observed similar situation appearing between US and China. But in last 7 years, things have gone in completely contradictory directions. Things have actually moved in positive direction and the tension has significantly diminished between US and China.

Actually, the world has reached its most peaceful era in the history of mankind. In Europe, not only do we have zero probability of war but we also have zero prospects of war.

In short – “Everything has changed”

Argument: Nothing has changed

Although on the surface it appears that things have actually moved in positive direction between US and China. But underneath the surface geopolitical rivalry has begun. In we look at the intention behind India – US nuclear deal; one can argue that this deal is an impact of US geopolitical decision to create India against China. US do not want China to emerge as the Asia’s largest power. They are looking for creating India against China.

Russia’s attack on Georgia is actually the counterattack of the Orthodox world against the West’s latest crusade including invasion in Serbian homeland and invasion on Iraq.

Therefore when we are looking for solutions, we really need to be careful.

We have no clear idea about where the world is going to go. We can also say the 21^st century is actually the repetition of 19^th century. Asia is currently observing the similar geopolitical situation, as we had observed in Europe in the 19^th Century. Therefore, we might see a war happening in Asia very soon. Looking at the current situation, India – Pakistan war seems most probable.

In fact what happened in India on 26^th November, 2008 is actually a repetition of US 911. The large strategic objective of organizations that were behind these attacks was to make US act against Islamic world. In fact, they succeeded hugely in their mission. The invasion of Iraq is a strategic gift to those who wanted to create these differences.

One of the goal behind Mumbai attach was to kill people. At the same time, they also had a strategic objective. That is to create conflict between India and Pakistan. We need to question ourselves, do we really want them to succeed or perhaps we need to be careful in taking any further steps.

Another possible outcome of Asia might be that we return to 20^thcentury Europe, that is, ‘Cold war’. Tension has already stated to build up between India and Pakistan.

As per Prof. Kishore Mahbubani personal views, the probability of war is 20%, the probability of cold war is 30% while there are 50 % chances that we might see the emergence of Peaceful Era. In fact if we look around this new era has already started to emerge. Right not there is no major war happening around the world. The prospects of war have globally gone down. China and Vietnam were fighting from last 1000 years. Few years back, we have seen roughly one million soldiers confronted from both sides on war front. But now it’s all over. This is the best time in the history of China-Vietnam Relationship.

But to achieve this objective there are 3 key challenges:

1. Global Leadership: Currently everybody is taking care of their part but nobody is thinking about 6.5 Billion people as a whole. Even though there are bodies like IMF and world bank but still nobody is showing up as the Leader.

2. Anger of the population of Islamic countries: Prof Mahbubani proposed that lets us work together to find a solution to Israel – Palestine problem and we will break the back of Islamic anger.

3. Asian Counties provide global leadership to the world: The Asian countries were the major beneficiary of the policies created after the second world war by American and European union, which have contributed to the recent success of Asian countries. It’s time for Asian countries to give it back and deal with it responsibly.

Stephen Cohen, agreed to most of the observations and recommendations of Prof. Mahbubani. He mentioned that while dealing with the challenges mentioned by Prof. Mahbubani, we need to keep in mind is the fact that we are living the nuclear age.

In the direction of improving the public polices, India need to take care of following aspects:

Create think tank with global mind set
Coverage: Domestic issues, covering various prospective as well as global issues
Communication: Work we do has to be broadcasted. Use all modern means of communication
Credibility: It comes from quality control. We really need to have appreciation for quality.
Courage: People who can challenge existing conversation and thinking
International Dimension: Currently all major reputed institutions in India like IIT, IAS, IPS focus around “India”. We need “Global” focus in Indian Institutions.

Bob McDonald, Chief Operating Officer, Procter & Gamble

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here today.

I agreed - enthusiastically - to join you for a couple of reasons.

First, Sarath Naru asked me. Sarath, who as you know is on the IIT organizing committee, worked for me at P&G in the early 1980s and we’ve stayed in touch. I have tremendous respect for Sarath and was honored by his invitation.

Second, India is an important business for P&G. We have nearly 1,500 employees here and our India business has quadrupled in the past five years. P&G is now among the fastest growing hair care companies in India. We’re a leader in Baby Care, Health Care, Feminine Care, and men’s grooming. Our Company has been recognized consistently as one of India’s best companies to work for, which is a particularly important recognition for us. We expect the India business to become increasingly important to P&G’s overall growth in the years ahead, and we’re committed to helping stimulate India’s economic growth through our brands and our people.

The focus areas of this year’s Global Summit are highly consistent with P&G’s own focus areas, and it’s a real pleasure to be part of the conversation you’re having here this week.

I want to use my time today to talk about why innovation matters - and how innovation can be managed as a disciplined, reliable process.

We’re strong believers in the power of innovation at P&G, and our Company has a track record of innovation leadership that stretches back for decades. I won’t suggest for a moment that we have it all figured out, but I believe our experience may be valuable to those of you who lead innovation or have a stake in the success of innovation at your companies or institutions.

P&G Background
Before I get into this topic, I want to share just a bit of background on P&G.

The best way to introduce you to P&G is to introduce our brands. P&G is a company of brands - and for 171 years, our brands have been touching and improving consumers’ lives in small but meaningful ways every day.

• We compete in more than 20 product categories, often with two or more leading brands in a single category
• We have 23 billion-dollar brands and 20 brands with sales between $500 million and $1 billion
• These brands are sold in more than 180 countries. Today, we reach about three and a half billion consumers worldwide. That’s a billion more than we were reaching at the beginning of the decade, and a billion less than we expect to reach by early in the decade ahead.

Here’s just a brief glimpse at a few of P&G brands as consumers see and experience them around the world.

P&G Billion Dollar Brand Video
Equally important - though not as visible as our brands - are P&G people. We have operations in nearly 90 countries. We have nearly 140,000 employees worldwide - the most diverse organization in P&G history. In fact, P&Gers represent more than 140 nationalities and ethnicities.

Consumers drive P&G’s business model, which is focused on delighting the people we serve from the moment they hear about a P&G brand and product… to when they choose it at the store shelf… to when they use and experience it at home.

This is how we create loyal consumers, P&G’s most important stakeholders.

• Loyal consumers buy brands more regularly and more often
• They are less price-sensitive and buy more at full or list price
• They use more products in the line
• They’re more willing to expand their regimen of product usage
• They often become ambassadors for the brand

To create loyal consumers, P&G brands must become a trusted and often intimate part of people’s lives. We’re not curing cancer, but we are caring for babies and pets. We make everyday chores like cleaning houses and bathrooms easier and even - on some occasions! — enjoyable. We make literally billions of people look and feel better every day.

In short: We care for you and your family.

And that brings me back to my topic for today: innovation.

Why Innovation Matters
Innovation is always a hot topic. There are legions of books, articles, speakers, consultants, awards and more - all focused on innovation. But in the midst of all this noise and attention, I think it’s important to begin with the most basic of questions:

Why does innovation really matter? Why is it important and what do we know about innovating successfully?

Innovation matters for two fundamental reasons:

First and foremost, innovation is the key to improving quality of life for people in every part of the world. We face enormous challenges today - as individual companies and institutions, but also as nations, as societies, and as a planet. I believe most if not all of these challenges can be highly responsive to innovation. We’re not innovating boldly enough in as many areas I think we could and should be doing.

Second, innovation is the primary driver of business, financial and economic growth. I don’t know of a company or a country that has prospered and grown over the long term that has not also been an innovation leader.

This fundamental importance of innovation creates a unique demand for leadership. We need strong innovation leaders not just in our labs or universities, but at senior levels in business, in legislative and policy roles, and in not-for-profit and non-governmental institutions.

Innovation leadership is 21st century leadership. And that’s why I’m here today. I believe - and our experience at P&G supports this - that there are a few critical lessons about how to inspire and manage game-changing innovation… innovation that improves lives and drives growth. I want to talk about those lessons, and then I’ll be happy to take your questions at the end.

Consumer-Inspired and Disciplined Innovation
The critical lessons from P&G’s experience is that innovation must be consumer-driven and it must be managed as a social process.

At the end of the day, innovation is a human activity. On one hand, innovation benefits human beings and, ideally, it should be inspired by and focused against their needs and aspirations. At the same time, innovation requires human creativity and human collaboration. It should not be managed as a mechanical process but, rather, as a flexible social process that very deliberately enables creativity and connections and collaboration.

To do this at P&G, we focus on two things:

• We define innovation broadly: what it is, where it comes from, and who’s responsible for it
• We make innovation a systemic, replicable and reliable part of the way we manage our business

What Innovation Is
Let’s look first at what innovation means at P&G.

For us, innovation is not invention. It’s the conversion of a new idea into consumer delight and, ultimately, into revenues and profits. If an idea or technology cannot be successfully commercialized, it’s not an innovation.

So… set the bar high for what constitutes innovation. But we define innovation very broadly, in terms of what it is, where it comes from, and who’s responsible for it.

• What innovation is: We think in terms of “holistic innovation.” We want to innovate at every point where our brands touch consumers’ lives. We also want to innovate in every part of our business. We don’t think only in terms of product or packaging innovation. We also look for opportunities to innovate in design, communications, business models, cost structures, organizational structures, and more.
• Where innovation comes from: Inside P&G, we look for innovation ideas across our total portfolio of businesses and technologies. We compete in more than 20 product categories, from skin care to oral care to diapers to laundry and household cleaning products to fine fragrances. We have deep technical competencies in about a dozen sciences and technologies, including surfactants, paper-making, enzymes, and polymers, among others. We’re able to transfer technology and ideas across these businesses and areas of expertise.At the same time, we’ve turbocharged our internal capability with an external network of innovation partners through an approach we call “Connect and Develop.” There’s a global network of about two million researchers, scientists and entrepreneurs doing work in areas relevant to P&G businesses. They are all potential innovation partners for us. We can help commercialize their ideas and technologies on a scale few other companies can match, which makes us a very attractive innovation partner.
• Who’s responsible for innovation: With innovation defined so broadly and coming from so many sources, it becomes everyone’s job. We want every P&Ger to be in the innovation game and to continually look for opportunities to innovate, no matter where they may be in the Company.

Defining innovation so broadly has important benefits. The simple fact is that we create many more innovation opportunities because we’re looking in more places, we’re working with more partners, and we’re trying to meet more needs. A narrower definition would severely limit our ability to improve so many parts of so many people’s lives. Thinking broadly unleashes innovative capacity throughout our company.

Having said all this, it’s important to note that defining innovation broadly is necessary - but it’s not sufficient to lead game-changing innovation. There must also be an end-to-end model for making innovation intentional and disciplined, repeatable and reliable.

So let’s look now at P&G’s innovation process.

The Power of Purpose
For innovation to have a pay-off - to drive sustainable organic growth - it must be integrated into the business. We focus on eight drivers: purpose, goals, strategies, strengths, structure, systems, leadership, and culture. I won’t take time to today to go into all eight in detail, but each has a distinct role to play in innovation so I will touch on them all and then explain a few in more depth.

The first and perhaps most important driver is purpose. A sense of purpose that’s larger than “the numbers” gives meaning to work and unifies an organization - and linking innovation to P&G’s purpose has a powerful effect.

As I suggested earlier, our purpose as a company is to improve consumers’ lives with branded products and services. This purpose is what attracts great people to our company, and it’s a big reason why so many people spend their entire careers at P&G.

Focusing on a purpose as expansive and yet as specific as improving quality of life presents enormous opportunities to innovate and to grow. For example, there are three demographic “megatrends” creating opportunity to improve people’s lives with personal Health Care products and services: the aging global population, an increased consumer focus on wellness, and an increasing level of direct consumer involvement in managing personal health. These trends are most prevalent in developed markets, but they’re quickly emerging in developing countries, as well.

There are about 500 million people over 65 right now, and projections are for 1.6 billion by 2050. In addition, the projected average global life span by 2050 will be 76 years, more than 10 years longer than today.

As people age, they’re focusing more on wellness and are redefining what it means to be “old.” Instead of associating “old” with a number, people are associating age with their quality of life and wellness. Consumers are taking more control of their health and wellness by proactively seeking information on products and services that improve their quality of life. As a result, companies with the best consumer insights to drive meaningful innovation delivered on trusted brands will be best positioned to capitalize on the aging and wellness trends.

We have several innovation focus areas. I’ll mention just one: Home health diagnostics. We recently launched a home pregnancy test through a venture with Swiss Precision Diagnostics. This new innovation offers the double reassurance of a clear digital result and an indicator of when conception occurred. We’ll be expanding this innovation as aggressively as regulatory approvals allow. However, the real growth opportunity will be in self-diagnostic categories that haven’t yet been created. We are unleashing the innovative spirit of our people by imagining self-diagnostic categories that we can literally create - and, in the process, empower people and fundamentally improve their lives.

I could spend my entire speech today talking about the power of purpose. I won’t do that, but I do want to underscore how important it is. People will innovate for rational reasons, of course. They’ll innovate for financial gain, or for competitive advantage. But in my experience, a purely rational approach to innovation is self-limiting. It runs out of steam at some point. There needs to be an emotional component, as well - a source of inspiration that motivates people to contribute in ways that are far greater than themselves.

In other words, purpose is a critical driver of innovation.

Clear, Stretching Goals
The second driver is a clear, stretching set of goals.

Goals are important because they guide or influence virtually every other critical choice. If goals are unrealistic, they unleash organizational behaviors that are often inconsistent with long-term sustainable growth and unfocused innovation.

Businesses will inevitably make bad strategic and financial decisions in the pursuit of goals that are too high and cannot be realistically sustained. On the other hand, if goals are too low, they lack aspirational power and competitors start out-performing you pretty quickly. It’s important to find the right balance.

P&G’s goals are four to six percent organic sales growth, double-digit earnings-per-share growth, and 90% or better free cash flow productivity. These goals are realistic yet still demanding. The categories in which we compete grow about 3% a year. If we maintain market shares, which is always a challenge given the competitive intensity of our industry, we grow along with the categories. But we need another one to three percent top-line growth to meet our goals.

The only way to achieve this is to increase market shares, to expand into new geographic markets, and to create new brands and categories - virtually all of which demand consistent, successful innovation.

Future performance will always be evaluated in the context of the goals… and future choices will always be influenced by how much growth is required and where it will come from.

The right goals are the pre-requisites for innovation.

Where-to-Play and How-to-Win Strategies
Strategies are the third driver.

Strategies are the few critical choices required by goals: where to play, how to win. What to do and what not to do.

P&G’s global growth strategies fit on one piece of paper. There are only three: to grow our core businesses, to accelerate growth in more dynamic businesses like health and beauty care, and to win in developing markets. These three strategies have provided a clear and consistent focus at P&G since the beginning of this decade.

In and of themselves, there’s nothing too remarkable about P&G’s strategies. They’re not dramatically different from our competitors’ strategies. But the decisive factor that ensures these strategies are winning strategies is innovation.

As our leadership team developed these strategies seven or eight years ago, we focused not only on where we saw growth opportunities in our industry but, even more important, on where we could grow the most by innovating.

We don’t want to be in businesses that aren’t responsive to innovation. We look for focus areas where we believe we can leverage our particular combination of consumer insight, innovation expertise, and brands.

Innovation capability should be a primary driver of strategy.

Strengths that Matter Most
Core strengths are the next driver.

The deciding factor in P&G’s success is our ability to leverage a few core strengths. We’ve determined that five strengths matter most to winning in consumer products: consumer understanding, branding, innovation, go-to-market capability, and global learning and scale. We were strong in each of these areas a decade ago, but we didn’t have clear competitive advantages in all of them. This told us where to focus and invest, which is what we’ve done and continue to do.

For example, we’ve invested well over a billion dollars in consumer and shopper research. That’s far more than any competitor and roughly double the competitive average in our industry. We’ve taken one of the industry’s more traditional market research organizations and have turned it into a consumer understanding powerhouse.

We’ve moved away from traditional focus group research and have increased our investment in immersive research more than five-fold. We’re spending far more time living with consumers in their homes, shopping with them in stores, and being part of their lives. This total immersion leads to richer consumer insights, bigger innovations, and faster speed to market.

I’ll give you just one brief example.

Defining a brand’s target consumer is the most critical step in brand-building. It goes well beyond basic demographics and psychographics. It requires deep understanding of what drives their emotions. It requires us to understand not only her needs but also her aspirations.

If we do it well, we uncover unarticulated reasons why a consumer chooses one brand over another. For example, a woman may say she buys a certain fine fragrance “because it reminds me of my first boyfriend.”

With insights like this, we can determine which groups of consumers have the highest potential to be attracted to our brand, and develop communications precisely targeted to them.

This is the foundation for effective and efficient brand building. It may sound painfully obvious, but to appreciate how difficult it is to do well, think about this: only about one of every four brands and products introduced each year in our industry succeeds. Three out of four fail.

Olay is a perfect example of how to beat these odds. We’ve used very detailed consumer understanding to build a great mega-brand. Olay has created distinct boutiques in the anti-aging segment to meet unique needs for highly specific prime-prospect groups.

• Total Effects appeals to women who want to repair multiple signs of aging and restore their skin to its natural condition
• Regenerist appeals to women who use a regimen of products to care for their skin. They’re very aware of ingredients and the chemistry behind the benefits
• Olay Definity has many of the same attributes as Regenerist, but appeals to consumers who are also concerned with the tone and texture of their skin. These are generally more mature women.

These insight-driven segments have enabled Olay to grow dramatically in very little time. Seven years ago, Olay was “Oil of Olay” and lost in the clutter of skin-care brands. Today, it’s the world’s leading retail skin care brand with more than $2 billion in sales.

I could provide similar examples for all of P&G’s core strengths - but I won’t take time to do that. The key point is that it’s the combination of these strengths that is competitively decisive - and it’s ALL about innovation.

When we put it all together, we see and create more innovation opportunities… we bring innovation to market on leading global brands and with deep local knowledge and strong retail partnerships… and we commercialize innovation more consistently - all which leads to sustainable growth and superior shareholder returns.

Organizing for Innovation
Structure is the fifth driver.

It’s important to organize for innovation, to be deliberate about enabling the connections and collaboration necessary for innovation to occur.

There’s no one-size-fits-all structure when organizing for innovation. In fact, the same company often needs different structures to meet varying innovation needs. Innovation is about “just-enough” structure. The key is to have clear criteria for designing the right organizational structure.

• Whether the innovation opportunity is inside a core business, in a business adjacent to the core, or in an entirely new business
• The levels of risk and opportunity and the level of investment required
• The degree to which innovation opportunity leverages core strengths or requires new strengths
• The time horizon of innovation development
• The experience and expertise required

We’ve used these criteria to create a variety of innovation structures within P&G. Our corporate innovation fund, for example, specializes in high-risk, high-reward ideas. It’s essentially an in-house venture capital firm that does initial concept, design, engineering, and qualification work and then hands over successful ideas to the appropriate business units. Our “FutureWorks” team focuses exclusively on innovations that can create entirely new businesses. There are new-business-development teams in every global business unit that focus on creating new categories adjacent to existing P&G categories.

We’ve also created innovation centers - what we call Innovation Hot Zones” - that help us solve tough innovation challenges by providing simulated in-home and in-store environments. P&G teams isolate themselves and interact with consumers and shoppers for days or even weeks at a time.

Equally important, we’ve organized for the open innovation that I mentioned earlier. We see open innovation not as a form of out-sourcing but, rather, as a way to “in source” the creativity of the world.

Less than a decade ago, only about 15% of our new products had an external component. Today, well over half of the innovation we’re bringing to market includes ideas or technologies from outside P&G.

For example, our Swiffer brand partners with Unicharm, Royal/ Dirt Devil, and IDEO for product, commercial and design innovation. Another brand, Febreze, resulted from partnerships with KJK, Givaudan, and GK Design for technology, perfume development, and package design. The core pentapeptide technology at the heart of Olay Regenerist came from Sederma. And we recently outlicensed P&G food technologies and packaging capabilities to ConAgra Foods, which is a good example of taking innovation out, not just in.

We place great emphasis on building long-term relationships with our innovation partners. We want P&G to be the preferred innovation partner for large institutions and small entrepreneurs alike. We want the best innovators everywhere knocking on our door and giving us the first look at ideas, technologies or fully baked products that we can commercialize on a scale they can rarely if ever do on their own. These relationships have become an indispensable part of P&G’s innovation capability.

I could on. There are examples in virtually every P&G business. But the important point goes back to structure. It’s important to be flexible, and to adapt structures to meet specific business and organizational needs - but the need to be intentional about organizing for innovation is constant.

Innovation Systems
The sixth driver of innovation at P&G is the mix of systems we’ve created to enable innovation throughout the company. More than any other factor, systems are the way we avoid dependence on “eureka!” approaches to innovation.

Innovation is a social process, but that doesn’t mean it lacks discipline. We manage innovation with considerable rigor. We select innovation projects, allocate resources, and ultimately bring the best innovations to market with highly disciplined processes and systems.

Our innovation process can be broken down into four major phases:

• The first is what we think of as the “Search and Discover” phase. We look for ideas everywhere we can find them: from consumers, retail customers, suppliers and other partners. We look across and beyond our own industry. We look in every part of the world. We invest small amounts of capital to test the viability of new ideas as they take shape and ultimately end up exploring, in some depth, about 5,000 innovation ideas per year.
• From this pool of early-stage ideas we move to our second phase: “Select and Resource.” We start making harder choices at this point in the process. We allocate human and financial resources to ideas that have the most promise. We combine others into bigger opportunities. The rest we kill (which is an important part of our innovation process. We kill far more projects than we green-light.)
• “Design and Qualify” is stage three, where multifunctional teams from products research, marketing, manufacturing, engineering, finance, design and other functions - develop comprehensive plans against very demanding success criteria. These plans are then qualified through a combination of virtual and physical tests.
• The few ideas that make it this far move into our product launch pipeline, the phase we call “Launch and Leverage.” This is where we work out the in-market details: retail distribution, pricing, consumer trial, repeat purchase, and ultimately sales and profit. Products then flow to market around the world with sufficient investments to generate consumer awareness and to generate the multi-year trial necessary to create $100 million, $500 million and billion-dollar brands.

We call this innovation process “SIMPL” - and, as you can see, it is a relatively simple system for creating and launching innovative products. There are elements in each phase that represent proprietary knowledge - from consumer understanding methodologies to virtual qualification tools - but the overall process is clear and standardized. We use this same system in every part of the company and in every market around the world.

It works. The best example is our new-product success rate. In the U.S., our largest single market, one third of the most-successful new products in our industry have come from P&G over the past 13 years. Last year alone, 5 of the 10 best-selling new consumer products in our industry came from P&G brands.

There’s no one-size-fits-all set of systems that companies can unwrap and implement. They need to be tailored, but the principle behind systems is that they must be sufficiently standardized to be replicable, and to create scale - AND they must be flexible enough to guide ideas from discovery to the market-place - or to oblivion, if that’s where they belong.

Innovation Culture
Creating an innovation culture is a particularly important driver. Innovation requires a certain kind of culture, one that is curious and courageous, connected and collaborative culture, and open-minded - a culture in which people want to take risks to identify game-changing, life-enhancing innovations.

Culture isn’t something you can mandate or impose. It has to grow organically from the ground up. But culture can be influenced and shaped - by a combination of leadership actions and external forces.

There are several characteristics of an innovation culture:

• A strong sense of purpose, as I discussed earlier
• Agility and flexibility
• Trust
• Collaboration
• And it needs to thrive on reapplying good ideas with pride

Leaders can do a lot to cultivate these attributes through personal example, rewards and communications. This is something I’ve worked hard on in every organization I’ve led at P&G.

A good example is from when I ran P&G’s business in Japan, in the mid ’90s. We had lost about four percent of our business each year for the previous five years. People were hunkered down. They weren’t getting out of the office. They weren’t spending time with consumers in their homes or with shoppers in stores. And they weren’t spending much time with their families, either. So I did a few things to jump-start the kind of culture I felt we needed - to inspire people to perform at their peak… and to get the business growing again.

First, I had the lights turned off at night. People had no choice but to go home when the sun went down!

Second, I made sure people took vacations. I’m a big believer that people need rejuvenation to be at their creative and executional best. P&G wasn’t going to be an innovation leader in Japan - where the standards for innovation are about as high as anywhere in the world - if our people were physically and emotionally drained.

Third, I began personally training people on the power of connections. You may be familiar with the science historian James Burke. In his books and TV shows, he traced the paths of discovery and innovation and, in particular, the unexpected inter-relationships between inventions over time. In most cases, some of history’s greatest innovations were spawned by earlier inventions that had nothing to do with how they ended up being used. Marconi invented the radio for ship-to-ship communications and never expected it to be used on land. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone for hearing-impaired people. Thomas Watson believed the world would never need more than five computers; he never saw it as an invention that would find its way into millions of households.

I found this to be terribly inspiring, and began talking about it every time I met with our people. We began imagining how even small ideas could evolve into much bigger innovations. Those conversations unleashed a creative spark in our people that very quickly began to drive the business.

We had a great string of wins in the years that followed and the innovation culture we brought to life more than a decade ago is alive and well in P&G Japan today.

In addition to culture levers we can pull inside, there are also important external forces that can shape culture. External realities have a way of demanding culture change - and, properly leveraged - can be a positive catalyst for innovation.

First is P&G’s growth challenge. We have to add the equivalent of Tide or Greater China or Latin America every year to meet our growth targets. The sheer magnitude of this challenge will demand that we become a stronger and stronger innovation culture. There’s no other way to achieve the growth.

Second, new competitors. We compete against some of the best companies in the world: Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly Clark, L’Oreal, and Unilever, among others. We also compete against new “lean and hungry” competitors - retailer private labels and local low-cost manufacturers in developing markets. They are formidable foes, and they’ll demand innovation leadership from us, in every part of the business.

Third, the price/ cost squeeze. The global economic downturn is having a significant impact on consumers in developed and developing countries alike. Consumers need and are demanding value now more than ever. Innovation drives value.

Fourth, the realities of the “flat world”. There’s probably no country in the world where these realities are as evident today as they are here in India. This will demand greater agility, flexibility and speed, and greater capability to deal with ambiguity and unpredictable change - all elements of an innovative culture.

These and other external forces are good for us. They demand the best of us and they create abundant opportunities to innovate in everything we do.

Innovation Leaders
The final driver of innovation is leadership - and I can tell you from personal experience and up-close observation, innovation leaders have unique responsibilities and must possess or develop a few unique skills or strengths.

The job of innovation leaders is to unlock and unleash the creativity, initiative, leadership, and productivity of innovators. It’s that simple, but not easy to do.

Innovation leadership requires a blend of IQ and EQ - Intelligence and Empathy. EQ is incredibly important in a diverse, people-intensive activity like innovation. We have to develop the intuition to understand and appreciate people’s intentions, feelings and motivations - all of which have been shaped by experiences that may be sharply different from those we’ve grown up with ourselves.

Innovation leadership is not “feel good” leadership. It’s not about charisma. It’s about creating conditions that motivate peak performers to seize opportunities and attack problems. It can and must be carefully cultivated through training and development, through personal coaching and example.

Creating innovation leaders is a top priority for me. It’s a top priority for our CEO, A.G. Lafley, and for all of the women and men who run P&G businesses. Good innovation are rare and need to be preserved, protected and promoted. If a company wants to place innovation at the center of its business, developing innovation leaders is not optional.

Touching Lives, Improving Life
I’ve covered a lot, and I appreciate your interest and attention. The point I want to close with is this: It’s enormously rewarding to be in the innovation game.

• Innovation drives growth, and people want to work in growth companies
• Innovation creates opportunities, often the result of heroic efforts by people and teams inspired by innovation
• Innovation improves lives - which makes it the most intrinsically rewarding work any of us can do

It’s on this point that I want to close. Last year, as we celebrated P&G’s 170th anniversary, we made a small but important change to P&G’s Statement of Purpose. We added the words: “Now, and for generations to come.” We made this change because we wanted to signal for ourselves and for others that we are a company of individuals who focus on doing what’s right for the long-term. Innovation is at the core of who we are, but it’s not an end in itself. It is a means to a higher purpose.

For us, it all comes down to the difference we can make in people’s lives every day - and to the difference we can make in the world around us. John Smale, our former Chairman and CEO, talked about this when P&G celebrated its sesquicentennial more than 20 years ago:

“We care about the world around us. It isn’t enough to stay in business and be profitable. We believe we have a responsibility to society to use our resources - money, people, and energies - for the long-term benefit of society, as well as the Company.”

We believe companies like P&G can be a force for good in the world. And we believe the best opportunity to be that force for good is through innovation created by our people and mostly delivered through our brands.

We think about P&G innovation - whether it’s a new product, a new shopping experience, new entertainment that we sponsor or information that we provide - as a way to share small gifts with literally billions of people.

A couple of years ago, we invited a group of independent film-makers to participate in a series of films that capture the many ways P&G brands and P&G people touch lives around the world. Each film-maker was free to choose his or her topic.

Some chose to focus on how our brands make small, intimate differences in people’s lives. Others chose to focus on philanthropic efforts. But all captured the contribution that generations of P&Gers have been making in sometimes visible and mostly invisible ways for more than a century and a half. I’d like to share just one these short films, followed by our own company film - which we call “Touching Lives, Improving Life.”

Videos
Haiti PUR - “Thirsty While Swimming”
Touching Lives, Improving Life

That’s P&G. Our Purpose inspires us. Our Values unite us. And all our innovation capabilities and culture focus us on making small but meaningful differences… every day… for the consumers who have ALWAYS been P&G’s boss and our inspiration.

Thank you.

1. Dr. Vinay Kumar, Associate Dean, MIT
2. Dr. Surinder Prasad, Director, IIT- Delhi
3. Dr. Promod Rastogi, EPFL, Switzerland
4. Dr. Rajiv Grover, University of Memphis

As the title and the speakers of this suggests, this was one of the most popular sessions at PanIIT 2008. As always, Prof Prahalad started the session in his bold & structured style. He said that the theme of this session is not about what India ‘will be’ but what India ‘can be’ at 75.

He said that I believe that, India can have:

1. 500 million professionals
2. 10% share of the global trade
3. Source of fundamental innovation – global laboratory
4. At least 10 Nobel Prize winners
5. Leadership beyond ‘tech’ and ‘economy’ (by leveraging its diversity, which no other country in this world can boast of)

Acknowledging the success of the Tata group as example, he said that they’ve shown incredible growth – from US$ 5.5b to over US$ 60b in less than 10 years. This became possible only through their bold steps – through the combination of inorganic (through BIG acquisitions) and organic growth.

To give direction and structure to the session, he requested the distinguished speakers to present their views as response to the following 4 questions:

1. What are the opportunities for India?
2. How can we provide Social Legitimization?  
3. How can India become the ‘lab for innovation’ (than just capitalizing on the cost arbitrage)
4. What is the India advantage?

Looking back at the history of Indian growth, he said that if 1947 was the 1.0 of Independence and if 1992-93 was 2.0 of Independence; can 2009 be the 3.0 of independence for India?

B. Muthuraman (CEO, Tata Steel) started first among the 3 distinguished Tata group CEOs. Talking to the relevancy of including society (responding to question 2), he started by listing the philosophy and fundamental values of the Tata Group:

1.    Oneness with society

2.    Adaptability

3.    Empowered workforce

4.    Financial prudence

He gave the example of Tata’s bid for Corus – the success of the deal primarily came from the transparency of the process and Tata’s image as socially responsible. As a result, Tata Steel was preferred by all stakeholders (direct and indirect).

He then talked on Innovation and said that in addition to the standardization of every product/process, there is a need to continuously improve and innovate including Social Innovation. Talking on this company (i.e. Tata Steel), he said that unlike IT (which is considered sexy), steel didn’t have the similar image. However, they leveraged the process, sales & marketing. As a result, today Tata Steel is a brand which commands premium. To inculcate the innovation, Tata Steel regularly organizes a program called ‘Knowledge Manthan’, in which people (including the ones with no formal education) across the organization participate with the single objective of generating new ideas which can take the company forward and the program has always exceeded the expectations.

Talking on India Advantage, he listed ‘People’ as the primary factor behind India’s growth (including future potential). In addition, adaptability (comes from the cultural diversity) and creativity (of the Indian mind) are other advantages, which if leveraged appropriately can help India meets the objectives laid out by Prof Prahalad.

Ravi Kant (CEO, Tata Motors) started his presentation by listing the opportunities (starting with local opportunities) in front of India:

1. Change in urbanization of mind – with the emergence of communication mediums such mobile and internet, a common man in India wants to improve the quality of life
2. Young age – great desire to succeed and transform the present
3. Discretionary (or disposable) income – leads to never imagined spending by at least 300m people

Connectivity (starting from physical connectivity) is the key to capitalize on the above opportunities.

He then listed the following overseas opportunities for India:

1. Forced innovation – due to competition created by bridging of the borders across nations
2. Inorganic growth – through acquisitions. Ravi listed the examples of Tata Daewoo followed by JLR takeover. Talking on the success of Daewoo deal, he said post acquisition, Daewoo (under the leadership of Tata) became the largest exporter of heavy trucks in 4 years.

He then shared his views on Social Responsibility. He again gave the examples of Daewoo and JLR. He mentioned that Tata Motors was the last in the race to buy Daewoo. Tata buying Daewoo in Korea was considered impossible and it faced huge resistance from everyone in Korea. However, when Tata Motors talked to all stakeholders and concerned parties – company management, PM, President, Mayor and others, the antipathy for Tata Motors translated to harmony. It was the Governance and Transparency of the Tata Group, which made this deal possible. The same happened with JLR takeover.

Talking on Innovation, he said that immature markets such as India are more fertile for experimentation and thus throw better opportunities for Innovation. Nano is a remarkable example. No one was ready to accept the idea of Rs 1 lac car in the beginning but Tata Motor’s undaunted stand along with collaborative innovation with everyone involved, resulted in the game changing product – Nano.  

Ravi as well pointed ‘People’ as the key advantage for India. He shared that the fuzzy logic (getting thing done without knowing everything) is the centre of Indian mindset. Entrepreneurship (and thus SMEs) is another advantage pointed by him. Again, the number of young people and finally low cost advantage were other advantages listed by Ravi.

He also listed India disadvantages, which must be realized and overcome for India to a true leader:

1. Lack of discipline
2. Quality – high tolerance for imperfection
3. Lack of care and concern for fellow human beings
4. Lack of killer instinct (giving up on 90%)

He concluding by sharing his confidence that India can regain its glory it had 300 years ago.

S Ramadorai (CEO, TCS) shared his views beginning with what India was considered few years back:

1.    A resource destination

2.    Critical market

3.    Disruptions were needed

4.    Constraints such as License Raj were to be addressed

Talking on the success of TCS (and IT sector), he stated that Outsourcing enables scaling up for businesses by reducing cost. Technology is necessary ingredient without which no future (including at the bottom of pyramid) exists. Globalization is no more an option today.

Like his predecessors, Ramadorai also acknowledged ‘People’ as the most importance resource for India. The human capital needs to be trained, mentored and nurtured. Corporate Social Responsibility becomes part of it. Innovation is not just limited to organization. Thinking big and delivering it is the strength we’ve in India.

Prof Prahalad summarized the point of views of three visionaries from Tata Group and left the audience with a question (and an idea for making big) – can we create a device which can connect and enable the education for 500m people in the next 10 years?

Dr Gautam Shroff (Vice President, Tata Consultancy Services; Head - TCS Innovation Lab - Delhi), the moderator of the session welcomed the audience at IITM Research Park and introduced the panellists comprising of academic & industry leaders focusing on research & technology. Talking on the preparation (and making) for this session on Research, Gautam said that the process began with two IIT Directors presenting their suggestions on how can IIT research inputs and outputs be improved, which was then followed by thoughts and views from Panellists. The views of the distinguished speakers are available on the site.

Prof. Sanjay G. Dhande (Director, IIT Kanpur) was the first speaker of the research track. He began his presentation by pointing out that the state of research and the state of the audience present here is similar – like in the case of research, we needed to wait for the audience to began the session. The location (and thus the distance) of the IITM research park from other conference venues contributed to the delay of this session.

Prof Dhande stated that any institute of higher education has two roles – knowledge dissemination (teaching) and knowledge creation (research). Research so far has been unfortunately a push model unlike teaching which has always been a pull model. Universities around the world have learned to convert research into wealth but India is far behind. Four specific areas to impact for improving research inputs & outputs are:

1. Students - Getting students for research has always been a major challenge. Networking between educational institutions is important across the globe. It requires aggressive marketing policy to attract talent for post graduate courses in research.
2. Faculty - Another challenge is attracting and retaining high quality faculty. The common myth that teaching load (in research at undergraduate institutions) is high contributes to this challenge. Incentivising the faculty’s efforts is an important requirement to address this challenge.
3. Infrastructure - Experimental aspects of the research have been missing in the research curriculum. So far, the focus has been only on competitive research.
4. Research Programs – Specialized research groups and programs need to be formed. Unlike programs like B. Tech which have a standardized curriculum, research needs much more flexible & evolving environment including defining the research programs.

Prof. Gautam Barua (Director, IIT Guwahati) – He highlighted his views in form of the challenges faced by research at IITs. He elaborated on the two issues faced by PhD students:

1.       Students Training - Although PhD students are growing in number but the challenge is the ability to train the PhD students before they get into research. The quality of the students however is not an issue.

2.       Faculty is another issue – revolving around both quantity and quality. PhD students taking on professor role is the possible solution but a major challenge.

Talking on the output, he highlighted the importance of great infrastructure as the pre-requisite for producing quality research output. He said that over the recent years, there has been an improvement in the infrastructure due to available funding options. However, issues related to government policies such as purchasing, tendering is another issue – govt needs to aggressively liberalize the policies.

Similarly, IITs in the limelight (for the bad reasons such as reservation) is another issue. In addition, there are myths like IITs don’t have research capabilities and resources, which contribute further to the poor condition of research at IITs. Doing a good job on marketing (not inherent to researchers) is the need of the hour.

Dr. Vishy Poosala (Head, Bell Labs India, Alcatel-Lucent) – He started his session by thanking everyone for skipping the chess competition to be hereJ. He was happy to be back at IIT Madras after a long time.  Humbly, he mentioned that he is really not connected with research inputs and outputs with IITs. However, in his view, Bell Labs has the similar issues and he drew parallels from his experience at Bell Labs – which can be used to address the challenges at IIT.

Like earlier speakers, he also listed Students, Faculty, Infra, and Programs as the key areas to impact the quality of research.

How to attract great students? Today, Entrepreneurship is considered more attractive than research (due to competition & peer pressure among IITians). IITs need a clear definition of value proposition for research opportunities as done by Bell Labs.  For e.g., Bell Labs value prop revolves around

1. Quality of research work is incredibly high compared to a typical job; the researcher gets to work with the great minds in the world. Ability to innovate – create something big which changes the way world is moving.
2. Salaries – Don’t just look for the short term gains. PhD students doing great work are paid exceptionally well. In US, there is a huge premium associated with PhD degrees even if you go to industry.
3. Incubators for disruptive research ideas to create internal start-ups can make Entrepreneurship and Research co-exist. Needs more emphasis by IITs.

How to create a structure so as to continue to do great research work? ‘Open Innovation – Collaborative work’ is the buzz word today. Industry-academia partnership is the key. It will significantly contribute to the output of the research work. As considered by global companies including Bell Labs, emerging markets such as India have much better opportunities and excitement for doing world class research.

Finally, Vishy also acknowledged the fact that we lack marketing - it is undervalued across our educational system. Talking straight, he said that “we totally suck in marketing”. What can we do? Liked an organizations, IITs should hire right people who can do a great job in marketing & promotion. Create right buzz about research programs & opportunities offered at IITs.

Prof. Jayant R. Haritsa (Faculty, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) – The focus of his presentation was ‘Rethinking the Research Crisis at IITs’.

He said that over the years, IIT system is using low input quality ass the justification for the low output quality. In addition, insufficient acceptance & encouragement from the Industry contributes to the current situation. Let’s not point fingers outside and instead enquire inwards. He shared some of the data on Research Productivity for CS @ IISC (2005): only 0.1 really good (i.e. tier I) research publication/per year/per person.

Quality of intellectual input at IIT is far better. Failure to mentor and train the quality input is the key reason for the current research situation at IITs. Dropout rates of PhDs is obvious  and validates this point. Can we produce 1.0 (tier I) pub/person/year?

Sure. What’s needed?

1. Change the current approach of ‘input evaluation’ to ‘output accountability’. Liberally provide physical & financial resources and ask for research outputs in return.
2. Choose one metric – research publications.
3. Develop appropriate policies/regulations and enforce them. Examples:
   1. B Tech/M Tech can get good grade in the final year only if s/he submitted paper in Tier I general
   2. No part time PhD students
   3. No student start-ups – confuses the students and get them caught up in marketing hype. Eg. At IIT Mumbai 3^rd year students were interviewing 2^nd years students
   4. Faculty policies

                                                               i.      Time bound response to the new applicants

                                                             ii.      Work-places and home accommodation should be adequate

                                                            iii.      Meeting with director on frequent basis

                                                           iv.      Clearly specified promotion criteria

                                                             v.      Do not force for locally relevant (e.g. rural research) research – give them the flexibility or be prepared to accept bad quality output

                                                           vi.      No faculty companies – creates severe conflicts of interests

To summarize, he reminded of ‘output accountability’. Hopefully we won’t need this panel at next PanIIT at IIT Chennai J, were his final remarks.

Dr C. Mohan (IBM/ACM/IEEE Fellow and IBM India Chief Scientist; Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Madras) - He started with his passion not only on research but also on advanced technology careers. He emphasised the importance of giving credibility and acknowledging people doing research – he finds it hugely missing. To make his point, he said that his manager’s manager is the CEO of IBM – he is not a manager and thus he is not looked highly. Technical careers should be highlighted as premium through Press and media.

We also need to make sure that people become good not only at the technical work but also in marketing their work. Selling the research idea is important to build right research ecosystem. Instead of just doing the lip service (as done currently) to training on marketing, we must take the required actions.

Also he confirmed the fact that remunerations for research professionals are reasonably good and are at par with salaries received by industry professionals. In his view, commercialization of research (faculty taking on roles in industry) is fine as long it is placed in the right structure. Universities such as Stanford, Berkley and MIT are great examples.

Prof Raj Bordia (Professor of Materials Sci & Engg, U Washington, Seattle) - He introduced himself as the only one outside the IT industry. He shared his experience of the last 3-4 months on his sabbatical at IIT Kanpur, where he analyzed the situation of research work.

The problem of good Input (Quality and Quantity of PhD) in his view is absolutely true. He validated the same through his interactions at IIT Kanpur. Students have thought about it and know the advantages but see more problems such as:

1. Limited career prospects
2. Significant financial penalty

At his time, at least 20% of his batch mates dream job was to be faculty at IIT. In US, 20-50% undergraduates go for research/faculty positions. Indians are interested in going to US if they choose to do research. Engineering research is perceived as inferior compared to scientific research.

Suggestions for input challenge:

1. Careers options (including salaries) must be improved
2. National missions to motivate students to do research
3. Recruit and admit non-Indian students
4. Encourage undergraduate to be involved in research
5. Mentoring by academicians at IIT

On the faculty issue, he said:

1. If we lose the input quality game, the chance of good faculty is negligible
2. Create a non-tenure faculty track
3. Flexibility of work for faculty
4. Networking and co-operation between IITs
5. Actively publicize the role of IITs in addressing the needs of the country

National missions such as Man on Moon are really required to motivate and inspire both faculty and students. Talking on structural changes, research priorities are defined by scientific community and not technology. They should be separate – ‘science and technology’ research doesn’t work together– they both have different dynamics.

Dr. K. Ananth Krishnan (Chief Technology Officer, Tata Consultancy Services) – He represents the voice of Industry. Talking on the quality of research in India, he highlighted two aspects:

1. Global Problem - The problem being talked is not limited to IITs; it’s everywhere even in US (except international hires, rest of the input for research is a huge challenge). China may be an exception in his view – they have a military of researchers.
2. Has India bypassed the academics in the area of research (where is research happening?)? For e.g., quality of the research work (and people doing the same) at ISRO is exceptional. They’ve critical mass for doing scientific research.

Specific suggestions:

1. Input Quality
   1. The Research mindset from the UG level, and certainly into the PG level must be identified (in say 20% of the students) and strengthened - the ability to tackle open ended problems, peer review, imagination and originality, perseverance.
   2. Strengthen the research component in UG and PG theses - don’t know what the standard of these is right now - but the 20% of people with the right mindset, must work on really interesting areas.
   3. Set targets to get 25% of the target set of students at UG level (ie 5% of total UG intake) to register for PhDs eventually - keep track of this on a personal basis, assign mentors from 2nd year onwards etc.
   4. Re-look at the entry criteria for PhD students, like many MBA schools - mandate some work experience in the domain (preferably in R&D-friendly companies) before accepting a candidate for a PhD
2. Faculty
   1. Industry style treatment of the faculty is critical
   2. Endowment funds such as being given to US universities are required
3. Output Quality
   1. Need a PR mechanism – promote the successes and accomplishments. Setting up a dean of public relations if required will be great. He said that his role as a CTO at TCS is like that of Chief Talking Officer – promote the culture for high quality research work.

Research in my opinion needs to be encouraged. Talking on the global conferences, he said the current structure of high registration fees, travel cost and limited visibility to people who want to showcase their work are prohibitive. Virtual conferences are a solution! You can bet that industry sponsorship for conferences and events will dry up in 2009! Can the IITs lead this?

Yet another great program under the family track of PanIIT 2008 - Play chess with Vishy! The three time world champion, first Asian to win the world chess championship, a 39 year old dynamic guy who has made India proud “Vishwanathan Anand” accompanied his wife Aruna, his parents and parents in law. They were also accompanied by the CEO if NIIT Mr. Vijay Thadani, who is also an Alumnus of IIT Delhi.

The occasion was opened by Smt. Natrajan and was later addressed by Mr. Thadani. He talked about their 10 years old association with Vishy and also made a mention of how Vishy & NIIT are contributing to the Mind Championship academy, wherein they have touched around 6,500 schools not only to promote the sport but also to enable the students to acknowledge their full mind potential.

He then shared a few incidents of vishy’s personal life with a pinch of humor. While talking on the contribution of Aruna in Vishy’s life, Mr. Thadani said “the reason for which Aruna likes chess more than Vishy is that “the King is stationary and queen has all the powers.”

Then came a short address by the man himself - Padma Vibhushan recipient Vishwanathan Anand. He mentioned a few words in appreciation for the IITians which was followed by the final and most awaiting moment where he played chess on 14 tables simultaneously. There were people from all the generations in the teams. With one hand in the pocket it looked like a cake walk for Vishy. He took approximately 4 seconds per move which included the time of moving from one table to another. The game went fo around 30 minutes and was then followed by interesting Q & A session, which involved questions on topics ranging from computers, chess, relationships and stress.

This post was contributed by Jaya Nakra of Wiz Appointments.

In his inaugural speech, Dr Manmohan Singh released the much awaited IIT Alumni Impact Study 2008 in front of over 1500 delegates attending PanIIT 2008 conference.

PanIIT in partnership with the Indian Brand Equity Fund (IBEF), commissioned a first-of-its-kind study on the impact of IIT alumni. The study aims to take stock of contributions made by IITians over the last 50+ years across professions and geographies and create a fact-base for mobilizing the IIT community to dialogue on how they can do even more, individually and collectively.  Zinnov Management Consulting, which employs a significant number of IITians, assisted PanIIT and IBEF with designing and conducting this ambitious study.

Here is the summary of findings as revealed by this study.

The “IIT Impact Study”, as Prof. Ananth mentioned, has finally provided some hard data; people do not have to take IIT’s contribution to nation-building on faith anymore!