Learning Organisations: The Process of Innovation and Technological Change

In the present scenario of globalisation, knowledge has become the prime factor of production for competitive advantage. This calls for acquisition and utilisation of knowledge for innovation and technical change on a constant basis, which is only possible in a ‘learning organisation’. Innovative activities of a learning organisation are influenced by three main factors: (1) internal learning; (2) external learning; and (3) the innovation strategies decided upon by the enterprise management. An assumption has been made that, particularly in developing countries, absorption and adaptation of technologies, i.e. indigenisation, take place through a process of ‘learning by doing’. Taking this into consideration, this paper focuses on a few case studies carried out at NISTADS, New Delhi, India, on small enterprises in the formal as well as traditional sectors, highlighting the learning process in an organisational context and how it brings in innovation and technological change at enterprise level. The study demonstrates that the learning environment in an organisational context is an indispensable process to be innovative and building up capabilities for technological change. This in turn also calls for strong networking of the enterprises with academia, R&D institutions and other enterprises, to create knowledge clusters. This builds up a strong case for a network approach of learning organisations not only at the regional level but also at the cross-cultural level for constant innovation and technical change.     

Constructivist Management of Knowledge,Communication and Enterprise Innovation: Lessons from Indian Experience

Prime movers of enterprise innovation are inside the organisation. The enterprise NIIT, studied in this paper, tells us how elicitation and recognition of knowledge and its contents set an enterprise on the move. Recognised knowledge is actionable. Each act of recognition is an addition to knowledge content, and such additions took place in NIIT through acts of communications and self-searching. These contents form a large collage that cannot be strewn into a single novelistic episode. Perspectives and context, motives and suggestions render to each member of the enterprise different disjoint appearances of knowledge. There are thus many knowledge systems and multiple narrations, each with small episode-like finality. Enterprise innovation is achieved not through any grand episodic integration of all knowledge contents, but by constructively eliciting further new contents of knowledge, and encouraging acts of communications and discourses on this new knowledge. Constructive management of knowledge and communication towards enterprise innovation has thus been defined. Through such constructive management, NIIT enabled itself innovationally and empowered its members in eliciting knowledge and acting communicatively. A critical feature of knowledge work is that it requires multidisciplinary expertise and mutual learning in order to achieve a complex synthesis of highly specialised state-of-the-art technologies and knowledge domains. A convivial work culture and a culture of communicative acts enable sharing of the non-informatised yet recognised contents of knowledge.     

Regional Specialisation for Technological Innovation in R&D Laboratories: A Strategic Perspective

The present paper attempts to highlight the strategy of regional specialisation for technological innovation in R&D laboratories. The paper makes a proposition that regional specialisation should be recognised as a strategic initiative for technology development in R&D laboratories. The rationale for this strategic initiative has been substantiated with the help of illustrations from the cases of technology development efforts taken up in different laboratories in the country under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India. In this direction, CSIR and other centres of excellence have played a pioneering role in the development of various industrial clusters and artisan concentrations in different parts of the country. The implications of adoption or otherwise of this strategy initiative for technological innovation in R&D laboratories have been discussed.     

Networks of Science and Technology in India: The Elite and the Subaltern Streams

The paper investigates the structure and functioning of the science and technology (S&T) system in India as it has evolved in the post-independence period (1947 onwards). The networks of entities involved in S&T actions, the paper argues, can be categorised, in terms of adopted approaches to agenda and priority setting and accounting for actions, into two streams. The origins and expansion of the two streams are traced. One, the ‘Elite’ stream (high profile and visibility linked to big industry), adopting what the paper has generically termed the ‘Nehruvian’ model of development, is shown to have emerged as a dominant network. The other socially powerful ‘Subaltern’ stream (less visible, closer to ground realities and linked to village and cottage industry), adopting the ‘Gandhian’ model of development, still remains dispersed and outside the consideration of high-level decision-making bodies. The paper stresses the importance of moving the support and attention from the dominant stream to efforts that attempt a synthesis between the dominant and the subaltern.     

Role of Universities in IT Education in India

In the wake of the information technology (IT) revolution, the paper describes the changing role of universities to promote IT education in India to generate qualitative and competitive manpower in the face of the mushrooming of private institutions in the field of IT. The rapid growth of private teaching initiatives reflects inadequacies of the public educational system to the needs of the emerging IT environment, especially considering the high prices charged by private training. It is pointed out that the emerging knowledge society and the economy are not going to be based on IT alone, but will depend on the development of both IT and basic research in domain areas. Any policy on IT education should ensure that basic disciplines are not ignored. Universities should develop new and innovative programmes for students from different basic disciplines to give training for high-end jobs. To promote IT education a new innovative concept of earning while learning has recently been introduced. Some of the initiatives started by Delhi University to modify/improve course programmes for IT education are highlighted, looking at the needs of the industry.     

Driving Force for Sustainable Development: Principles of Harmony and Balance

This research focuses on the driving forces of technology development and the interactive relationships between technology and the factors that promote economic development and social progress. It aims at presenting a basic theory for sustainable development, as well as a foundation for decision-makers for drawing up an integrative strategy. As such it is an attempt at how to create harmonious relations between human progress, technology, economy, and society.     

Entrepreneurial Innovations in Gujarat

Gujarat has been identified as an enterpreneurial hub of India, primarily due to the innovative behaviour of Gujarati entrepreneurs. This has led Gujarat to become known as a model of enterpreneurial innovations. This model of enterpreneurial innovations has been developed from a study of entrepreneurs in a variety of industries from the region and several industrial clusters of enterprises in Gujarat. The study points to the transformation of many communities, particularly the Patel community, which was traditionally an agricultural community, into a manufacturing class and a new emergent in Gujarat’s industrial scenario.     

Entrepreneurial Spirit of the Indian Farmer

The paper highlights entrepreneurial skills of Indian farmers, informal channels of communications in the socio-cultural setting of the village, tacit knowledge and factors responsible for the adoption of floriculture in open field conditions. It illustrates that the diffusion of new technology in a farming community is dependent on culture-based communication and the tacit knowledge-driven entrepreneurial spirit of a few.