• First there was the TechCrunch post “Three Israeli Femme-preneurs To Keep an Eye On” and the outrage and twisted comments on it.
• Then there was this article on Harvard Business Review on “How women have changed  Norway“.
• Then I heard about MIT’s 2nd Annual Photo Contest, the theme for which is Women’s Entrepreneurship: Empowerment through Innovation.
• Finally, there was an email invitation to the Delhi chapter of TIE India’s latest initiative a Special Interest Group (SIG) for Women.

I appreciate all of these initatives on one side – they encourage and showcase women in action in their respective fields of work. From the daily wage construction laborer to a small business owner to a CEO – they all should be applauded for their hard work and success.

On the other hand, does sex need to be a part of it? Is a person’s genetical framework relevant to their work? May be entrepreneurs should be applauded regardless of the sex they were born with. We all know there is no such thing as a man or woman entrepreneur. Yet we sometimes qualify professionals like doctors as male or female. Same goes with CTO, CEO, founder, Prime Minister, President, etc. Why do we do this?

Do we make any changes to the job requirements when its a man vs a woman?  No. Then why do we need such so called prefixes? I think these are just signs of how different people percieve. Personal biases remain a part of the normal social fabric worldwide, but it matters how we apply them in our decision making. If person X is paying for massage services, the person may prefer a masseuse or masseur as a matter of comfort. This may be a personal preference but to what extent is it valid? a> the gender based preffered service provider may provide worse quality b> in today’s age since you can’t tell a person’s sexual preferences, the same sex service provider might possibly cause you more discomfort. While this was a simple example of daily life biases, by the same token can people rationally apply the same comfort based bias while choosing a President or a Board Chairman?

History has taught us globally and specifically in India, that creating special fast track programs and/or reservation laws (for educational institutions and jobs) based on candidate sex, caste, religion, etc. creates more boundaries than the imaginary glass ceilings they break.

In that vein, a special interest group for women indicates to me that there is something lacking with all the existing groups @ TIE, Delhi and the avenues they offer to women for professional growth and networking are limiting in some fashion or the other. If such is not the case, then women can and should participate in the TIE groups of their industry and interest areas.

As a matter of logic, if one considers a woman an equal then by defintion she needs no special treatment. Having special groups is akin to segregation, which Dr Martin Luther King aptly explained to the entire world – is not an acceptable solution to any problem. What is the best way to treat the problems at hand:

- fewer women in higher ranking roles

- fewer women in certain industry sectors

- fewer women in the workforce than men

Is the solution to:

- ignore the problem, ensure law provides equal opportunity to men and women alike and then let the equally empowered women create their own destinies?

- or to create special rules, special groups, special laws to artificially push up the number of working women?

Subhash Menon, the MD and CEO of Subex, and Chairman of the Nasscom Product Forum in his article on the status quo of the Indian tech sector hit the nail on its head –  “It has been established that overseas venture capitalists are increasingly demanding that product firms in the West should locate as many functions as possible in India to save costs. A recent example is that of a Silicon Valley firm that managed to get through two years of operations with only about $5 million (by depending on India) instead of about $15-20 million that they would have otherwise invested. When overseas start-ups have woken up to this advantage, Indian companies should not be left behind. India is today at an inflection point with advantages eclipsing problems for setting up a software product company here.”

So are Indians rising to the innovation challenge?

Enterprising Indians have always been at it albeit at a smaller scale. A couple examples of Indian innovations with global impact show signs of things to come.

A recent economist article talks about Dr. Vivek Jawali and his team and their “beating heart” bypass surgery which causes little pain and does not require general anaesthesia or blood thinners, leading to speedy recovery. This approach, pioneered by Wockhardt, an Indian hospital chain, has proved so safe and successful that medical tourists come to Bangalore from all over the world. This is just one of many innovations in health care that have been devised in India. Its entrepreneurs are channelling the country’s rich technological and medical talent towards frugal approaches that have much to teach the rich world’s bloated health-care systems. Paul Yock, head of the bio-design laboratory at Stanford University, which develops medical devices, argues that medical-technology giants have “looked at need, but been blind to cost.” Amid growing concern about runaway health spending, he thinks the industry can find inspiration in India.

We have all heard of the much touted Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car with great fuel efficiency and low emissions. The real innovation in the Nano for me is its intended product delivery – the Car in a Box! The open distribution mechanism for the Nano does the same thing to the auto industry that IKEA did to the furniture industry. With American auto makers coming to India for additional revenues, Indian auto maker Tata Motors is now eyeing America as a market in addition to the booming Indian markets.

While these are great examples of innovations from a developing India, given the size of my birth country both in terms of land mass and the population inhabiting it; we will need at least one million innovations to make India the land where people think of ideas and make them happen instead of the land of people who do well what they are told to do by others.

Manoj Kothari, a designer in Pune shares his experiences on his blog about the changing landscape of his client engagements. He says,  ”For me, who saw a lot of rants around the Chinese onslaught of consumer products, the growth of the service economy and two rounds of recession, dating with foreign brands, technologies, collaborations and even consultants; it is heartening to know that India is moving up the value-chain of innovation. It may not be pacing up but inching up for sure.”

Meanwhile, Gordon Orr @ McKinsey Digital argues that China and India are taking it to the next level. He highlights that Indian & Chinese entrepreneurs are forced to be frugal so they tend to leverage heavily on technology and come up with new capital light models. The advantages of scale and talent are intrinsic to the massive countries meaning since there are so many of us ultimately finding talented employees is not a problem; at the same token the market opportunity even for a niche product is 5x  domestically compared to other countries. Gordon also talks about favorable factors like the increasing spending power at the burgeoning low income levels, the government shaping new policies and the rising importance of intellectual property. Specific to India, he does falter when he says that funding startups is an easy proposition with government, VC, private equity, angels, banks all waiting for their $$$ to be invested. Compared to Silicon Valley, I think its extremely difficult to raise money in India especially at the seed stage – bootstrapping is the trend in this part of the world.

Gordon ends his piece on an inspirational note:

“Can India and China sustain this pace and eventually move to the next level of technological innovation? Absolutely. The talent is there, as are capital and effective government encouragement. With stronger protection and rewards for intellectual property—a likely development as international companies begin to license technology from Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs—the stage will be set for the next step forward.”