Incubating grassroots technological innovations: honeybee network experience From sink to source: Po

1
Incubating grassroots technological innovations
honeybee network experienceFrom sink to
source Poor people and regions as
providersanil k guptaprofessor, iima and honey
bee network, sristi and exec vice chair,
National Innovation Foundation(NIF)anilg_at_sristi.o
rgwww.sristi.org www.nifindia.orgwww.gian.org
www.indiainnovates.com
2

 



 
 
Intellectual capital
                                         
                                         
                                        
Intellectual property
Social capital

Natural capital
 
Ethical Capital
Source Gupta, 2001
3
Contested Domains of Local Knowledge
Individual creativity, nurtured by community,
diffused widely in society
Community Knowledge
Public domain
Community knowledge, documented disseminated
with or without PI Consent
Knowledge
Individual Knowledge
Community
Individual
Public
Individual/Public knowledge
Individual
Private, individual knowledge /innovations/practic
e
Community
Practice
Public
None
Figure 1. Source Gupta 2001,Gupta and Sinha,2002
4

• Do incentives for innovations matter?
• Obviously yes, but do incentives of same kind
  will trigger various kinds of innovations?
• What kind of contingent models of rewarding
  creativity be developed so that innovations for
  various social segments evolve, mature and
  diffuse?

5

Resource right regimes
How to tailor incentives for combination of
resource and knowledge right regimes
6
Knowledge economy what role does intellectual
property play in it

• Wealth generation through creation, production,
  distribution and consumption of knowledge and
  knowledge based products
• Key characteristics of knowledge economy
• Consumption of knowledge does not reduce supply
• Law of diminishing returns does not apply, one
  can use knowledge infinite number of times
  without reducing its value because of use( it can
  become obsolete of course)
• Can be stored, and distributed at low cost
  digitally, infinitely durable,

7

• What do we reward and how
• Unaided technological individual or collective
  innovations ( covered by Intellectual property
  rights or not)
• Partnership between grassroots innovators and R
  and D institutions
• Public domain or open source innovations
• Linkage between innovation, investment and
  enterprise
• incubators for innovations
• Institutional arrangements that make a difference
  to the lives of the knowledge rich economically
  poor people through agricultural and health
  technologies

8
How to reward Portfolio of Incentives for
innovations
Forms of incentives Material
non material
Target Of individual Incentives collect
ive
9

• Three aspects of knowledge economy have
  implications for our understanding of
  conventional economic analysis ( Harris, 2001)
• Knowledge creation is an investment activity,
  like any other investment, it does not come free
• Once created, it contributes to growth of other
  factors of production, such as capital
• Knowledge accumulates. (In fact some times ,
  learning makes earlier knowledge even more
  valuable)
• Investment in human capital, our thinking,
  analyzing and learning faculties matters

10
Sample of Practices received for biodiversity
based treatments of diseases by local communities
and individuals at NIF