Pain and Excitement of Taking Technology to the Market
Authors: Sunder R 
Published: January 2017

With economic liberalization, the Indian industry has finally emerged from the shell of the license raj. It now sees investment in R&D as a means to survive and succeed in the long run. It has acquired an appetite for quality control and productivity in order to be competitive. To evaluate quality, manufactured products are tested for strength, performance, and durability in order to meet customer demands and, often, safety legislation. As a developer and manufacturer of technology used in testing, Bangalore Integrated System Solution (BiSS) has first-hand experience of the rapid changes in the market environment and what they mean for high technology manufactured products. As an entrepreneur who set up BiSS, the author experienced the challenges and tribulations of attempting to meet exacting requirements of test quality and performance, matching global standards.

If the BiSS experience is any indication, the time and environment are right for scientists and technologists to consider the option of entrepreneurship. The institutional support for taking technology to the market is woefully wanting. Even so, potential rewards justify the risk of personal initiative to build entrepreneurial linkages with industry in seeking orders to develop and supply the technology-intensive hardware and software solutions. As manufacturing moves to India, the demand for local technology is on the rise as global players see the importance of local support to their endeavour. This opens a continuous stream of opportunity for local innovators. It carries the potential for future support in product development thereby adding value at the intellectual level. Finally, global players may see reason in seeking Indian technology to meet their requirements back home as well as for their projects in third countries. Today, cost drives decisions to move manufacturing to India. The same rationale can move development to India and, eventually, to outsource technology itself.

For a country of India's size, strength, and stature, this is one more path to technological excellence tending to global leadership. For the scientist-entrepreneur, this is a unique opportunity to subject new concepts and technology to trial by fire at the hands of demanding customers in the industry. For the numerous national laboratories, such entrepreneurs can serve as useful partners in taking available technology to the market while at the same time providing direction to future marketable research and development.

Thus, this paper concludes with the following observations: Globalization of the economy and the movement of manufacturing into India provide endless opportunity for entrepreneurship driven by high technology. Though the economy has seen significant structural changes over the past decade, obstacles still remain in the path of free enterprise. Government policy needs to be fine tuned in order to create a level playing field for the ‘small-scale innovator.’ Financial backing for innovative entrepreneurship is woefully inadequate in our country, perhaps, because the system carries an inherent skepticism about local capability. Similar doubts persist in large corporates that are unwilling to risk local procurement of high technology products. Scientists and technologists attempting to take their technology to the market are likely to experience professional enrichment by way of putting their concepts and assumptions to the acid test of a competitive and demanding marketplace.