The UK has traditionally viewed Silicon Valley as the trailblazer of technological advancement, but environments producing innovation and success in the IT industry extend well beyond the USA. To drive success, the UK needs to expand its horizons and look to emerging markets, such as India, which has seen its ICT sector grow from being a $5.7bn industry in 2000 to a staggeringly large $100bn industry just 12 years later.
So how did India manage to foster the growth of companies such as Infosys, Tata, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro into renowned global players in the technology industry and build such a strong ICT presence?
Through education
To begin, India made ICT a priority for both the businesses that benefit from having a wealth of ICT graduates to hire, and for its government. This approach has bred an environment of close collaboration between the two, which has in turn helped develop a steadily growing supply of ICT expertise. Not only have technology companies teamed up with the Indian government and universities to increase the awareness of ICT, they have also worked closely with schools and colleges to upgrade their courses and prospectuses to be better aligned with the skills demanded by the ICT industry.
As a leader of this revolution, Infosys launched its Campus Connect programme, an industry academia partnership where faculty are specifically trained to teach ICT skills and through which they reach out to students in over 500 rural colleges throughout India.
While these initiatives are a large part of the equation, they take a long time to get started. The UK will not magically grow its number of IT graduates by simply introducing one-off courses on the topic. India's businesses and government know this, which is why India is now working towards scaling and increasing the number of graduate colleges, so that it has enough skilled people to meet the growing demands of international markets. The UK can learn from these methods to mirror the success that India has seen with its education reform. By developing long-term initiatives that engage students from a young age and motivate universities and colleges to cultivate an interest in technology among young people, the country can establish a successful and enduring education scheme that will produce top ICT talent.
Through entrepreneurism
In addition to reforming school curriculums, the UK must also take more steps to nurture its entrepreneurial culture. While some great advances in this area, such as Google's Campus London project in Tech City that now boasts 10,000 members, have already made their mark, additional investment and support is still required to change the entrepreneurial culture. Though many innovative technologies are invented in the UK, the founders of these ideas and products often sell them to foreign investors before bringing them to market.
In India, this "create and sell" culture just doesn't exist for entrepreneurs. Over the years, the country has developed a deep-rooted entrepreneurial spirit in the ICT space, as well as an incubator that breeds innovation and new ideas. This forward-looking spirit is a major driver behind India's success with technology. Today, locally-grown start-up companies, including Moodler, Rocketalk and CellZapp, are enjoying incredible success and growth. This progress has been stimulated by institutions such as the Mysore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI), and the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, which both actively support people to become entrepreneurs.
Innovative business models
Ultimately, Indian IT companies have achieved a profound level of global disruption by developing new business models that have shaken traditional working methods to their core. To achieve this, both these companies and the Indian government have established a long-term vision for strong ICT education programmes that continues to foster learning after a student has graduated and throughout his or her career.
The UK government and enterprises must take inspiration from what has been accomplished in India, and assume their responsibility to create a country-wide environment in which citizens are constantly re-skilled with the latest in IT advances to make them more employable. It's only by adopting these initiatives that the UK can keep its talent pipeline in line with market demands, and ensure that its economy will thrive for years to come.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Srikanth Iyengar
Quelle/Source: Computing, 01.08.2013
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