[draft] Innovation Systems in India: A Polysemic Approach to Innovation

Abstract:

Innovation in India is seen not as a top-down activity but as a participative, interactive, argumentative and dialectic interface. The democratic genius of the innovation system lies in the fact that different communities are subject not only to multiple histories but they also live in different times. Innovation connects these different times and contexts of knowledge into a coherent narrative while letting each group retain its context of culture, livelihood and meanings. This paper is an attempt to offer to understand innovation not just as a community or organizational activity but also as an interaction of sub-cultures with demands on the democratic framework in India. It attempts to move beyond the standard ideas of innovation theory which appear linear and mono-paradigmatic towards a cross-cultural discourse taking place in multiple times where the very diversity adds to the plurality of democratic encounter. The paper attempts to understand the future that the Internet and other globalization processes would bring about by an evaluation of the micro-worlds within which Rural India operates. It looks at the notion of user-led innovation as dialectic of Jugaad (bricoleur’s approach) across the sub-cultures existing in India. It incorporates the notion of customization, translation and indigenization that are being practiced in Rural India as a theory for studying the impact of personalization of products in the global market. Looking at innovation in India as a rule-based game, it identifies the various levels of players, the rules of the game as a set of problem-solving methodologies and play as an activity defining the range of permutations and combinations available while indigenizing a product. Innovation is played as a game where communities with different systems of knowledge operate and interact. Looking at examples of grass-root level innovation in India, we create dialectic of processes employed by the players within the contexts of their problems and generalize them as the rules of the game. These rules should not be seen as a mono-paradigmatic site of improvisation, but they are polysemic in their implications. What we wish to establish is that each game play is an inclusive knowledge network similar in structure but different in style. Each does not substitute for the other, each supplements the other. No story is complete without all of them present.