Globalization of the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry: Implications for Innovation

Abstract: In this article we create an industry-wide metrics of innovation based on the characterization of learning potential of foreign direct investment (FDI), technology acquisition and in-house R&D, analysis of patenting activity, assessment of R&D directions and evaluation of innovation outcomes. Our purpose is to reflect on strategies adopted for learning, competence building and innovation and for creating complementarities and linkages within India's pharmaceutical industry during the post-Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) period. With India facing the challenge of constituting pathways and strategies for accelerated learning, we also explore through whose actions, types of strategies and routes of growth have the limits of Indian pharmaceutical industry innovation been reached within one decade. Finally, how and with what kind of policy design can the Indian state and society intervene to push the frontier of innovation further within this industry. Indian state and business have chosen globalization pathways with specific implications for innovation. We assess systemic connections of these implications, suggesting that for a significant change in domestic and foreign pharmaceutical firms' orientation to disease, as reflected in outcomes of their R&D investment activity, there also has to be a major focus on pathways toward innovation for domestic markets

Grassroots Innovation Movements

Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these ‘grassroots innovation movements’ identify issues and questions neglected by formal science, technology and innovation organizations. Grassroots solutions arise in unconventional settings through unusual combinations of people, ideas and tools. This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements

Grassroots Innovation Movements

Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these ‘grassroots innovation movements’ identify issues and questions neglected by formal science, technology and innovation organizations. Grassroots solutions arise in unconventional settings through unusual combinations of people, ideas and tools. This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements

Building inclusive health innovation systems: lessons from India

This article presents an overview of the changes that are taking place within the public and private health innovation systems in India including delivery of medical care, pharmaceutical products, medical devices, and Indian traditional medicine. The nature of the flaws that exist in the health innovation system is pinpointed. The response by the government, the health, technology and medical institutions, and the evolving industry is addressed on a national level. The article also discusses how the alignment of policies and institutions was developed within the scope of national health innovation systems, and how the government and the industry are dealing with the challenges to integrate health system, industry, and social policy development processes

Introducing Grassroots Innovation Movements

In August 2015, while we were writing this book, a group of sustainability activists were gathering in the grounds of a borrowed château on the outskirts of Paris. They were intent upon ‘eco-hacking’ the future. What this meant was turning the château into a temporary innovation camp, equipped with the tools for developing a variety of technologies of practical and symbolic value for low-carbon living. These prototypes made use of open source designs and instructions in order that others can access, adapt and make use of these developments. The activity of the camp was publicized widely through social media and drew the attention of many commentators and even senior politicians (see www.poc21.cc for examples)

Structured Collaboration Across a Transformative Knowledge Network-Learning Across Disciplines, Cultures and Contexts?

Realising the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require transformative changes at micro, meso and macro levels and across diverse geographies. Collaborative, transdisciplinary research has a role to play in documenting, understanding and contributing to such transformations. Previous work has investigated the role of this research in Europe and North America, however the dynamics of transdisciplinary research on ‘transformations to sustainability’ in other parts of the world are less well-understood. This paper reports on an international project that involved transdisciplinary research in six different hubs across the globe and was strategically designed to enable mutual learning and exchange. It draws on surveys, reports and research outputs to analyse the processes of transdisciplinary collaboration for sustainability that took place between 2015-2019. The paper illustrates how the project was structured in order to enable learning across disciplines, cultures and contexts, and describes how it also provided for the negotiation of epistemological frameworks and different normative commitments between members across the network. To this end, it discusses lessons regarding the use of theoretical and methodological anchors, multi-loop learning and evaluating emergent change (including the difficulties encountered). It offers insights for the design and implementation of future international transdisciplinary collaborations that address locally-specific sustainability challenges within the universal framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Emerging insights and lessons for the future

This concluding chapter summarises the key findings of the ‘Pathways’ transformative knowledge network (TKN), its contributions to the ‘sustainability transformations’ literature and the lessons and implications for internationally networked, transdisciplinary research projects in the future. It revisits the theoretical anchors and methodological anchors introduced in Chapters 2–4, and draws on insights from the TKN from individual hubs in each of these areas, pointing to experiences both during the project and after its formal conclusion. It discusses the approaches used to foster cross-learning and evaluation in the project, and describes the single-, double- and triple-loop learning that this enabled. The chapter provides a deeper understanding of ‘transformative pathways to sustainability’ and the role that science and research can play in fostering them, not only through formal research outputs but also the tacit and experiential knowledge and the relationships that they can foster. The chapter closes by offering lessons and recommendations for researchers, funders, policy-makers, managers and practitioners with an interest in enhancing the contribution of social science and transdisciplinary research to the transformative agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals.Fil: Ely, Adrian. University of Sussex; Reino UnidoFil: Marin, Anabel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martin. Escuela de Economia y Negocios. Centro de Investigaciones Para la Transformacion.; ArgentinaFil: Marshall, Fiona. University of Sussex; Reino UnidoFil: Apgar, Marina. No especifíca;Fil: Eakin, Hallie. Arizona State University; Estados UnidosFil: Pereira, Laura. No especifíca;Fil: Charli Joseph, Lakshmi. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Siquieros Garcia, Mario. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Yang, Lichao. No especifíca;Fil: Chengo, Victoria. No especifíca;Fil: Abrol, Dinesh. No especifíca;Fil: Kushwaha, Pravin. No especifíca;Fil: Hackett, Edward. No especifíca;Fil: Navarrete, David Manuel. No especifíca;Fil: Mehrotra, Ritu Priya. No especifíca;Fil: Atela, Joanes. No especifíca;Fil: Mbeva, Kennedy. No especifíca;Fil: Onyango, Joel. No especifíca;Fil: Olsson, Per. No especifíca

Transformative pathways to sustainability: learning across disciplines, cultures and contexts

Transformations to sustainability are increasingly the focus of research and policy discussions around the Sustainable Development Goals. However, the different roles played by transdisciplinary research in contributing to social transformations across diverse settings have been neglected in the literature. Transformative Pathways to Sustainability responds to this gap by presenting a set of coherent, theoretically informed and methodologically innovative experiments from around the world that offer important insights for this growing field. The book draws on content and cases from across the ‘Pathways’ Transformative Knowledge Network, an international group of six regional hubs working on sustainability challenges in their own local or national contexts. Each of these hubs reports on their experiences of ‘transformation laboratory’ processes in the following areas: sustainable agricultural and food systems for healthy livelihoods, with a focus on sustainable agri-food systems in the UK and open-source seeds in Argentina; low carbon energy and industrial transformations, focussing on mobile-enabled solar home systems in Kenya and social aspects of the green transformation in China; and water and waste for sustainable cities, looking at Xochimilco wetland in Mexico and Gurgaon in India. The book combines new empirical data from these processes with a novel analysis that represents both theoretical and methodological contributions. It is especially international in its scope, drawing inputs from North and South, mirroring the universality of the Sustainable Development Goals. The book is of vital interest to academics, action researchers and funders, policy makers and civil-society organisations working on transformations to sustainability

Evidence-based national vaccine policy

India has over a century old tradition of development and production of vaccines. The Government rightly adopted self-sufficiency in vaccine production and self-reliance in vaccine technology as its policy objectives in 1986. However, in the absence of a full-fledged vaccine policy, there have been concerns related to demand and supply, manufacture vs. import, role of public and private sectors, choice of vaccines, new and combination vaccines, universal vs. selective vaccination, routine immunization vs. special drives, cost-benefit aspects, regulatory issues, logistics etc. The need for a comprehensive and evidence based vaccine policy that enables informed decisions on all these aspects from the public health point of view brought together doctors, scientists, policy analysts, lawyers and civil society representatives to formulate this policy paper for the consideration of the Government. This paper evolved out of the first ever ICMR-NISTADS national brainstorming workshop on vaccine policy held during 4-5 June, 2009 in New Delhi, and subsequent discussions over email for several weeks, before being adopted unanimously in the present form