Why Steve Wozniack is Wrong!
Speaking at the ET Global Business Summit a couple days ago, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak commented that the Indian education system does not encourage creativity. In an interview with the Times of India, he was asked to share his thoughts on India and if he thinks that a global tech company can emerge from the country. His response was, “I am not an anthropologist and I don’t know the culture of India well enough. I don’t see those big advances in tech companies. What is the biggest tech company here, Infosys maybe? I just don’t see that sort of thing coming out of Infosys and I have done keynotes for them three times”.
Many Indians have expressed a similar view in the past without being trolled. Maybe we believe an outsider does not have the right to express this view even if we tempt them with a question like “do you see a global tech company emerge from India?”!
Where I disagree with Steve Wozniack is his binary approach to answering this question with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. He has chosen this simplistic approach and responded with a ‘no’. Worse still, he has reached a hasty conclusion on the cause, which he has attributed to an education system that does not encourage creativity! I find it difficult to believe that laying the blame for all of our societal problems on the usual suspects - politicians and the education system - will help in anyway!
The same education system that he (and many other Indians – especially those who benefited from this education system and have returned to India after a stint in the US) is critical of, has produced several smart leaders who have gone on to head global tech companies (one can argue that it needed the vibrant American ecosystem for them to bloom). Education systems (creative or regimented) are part of the larger ecosystem and cannot be seen in isolation. A structured and regimented education system served a country that had chosen the path of state dominance in industry. Risk taking and thinking big is a necessary condition for education to take on a creative flavor. Both of these were suppressed in the previous decades of an inspector-license raj. As a result, the other pieces fell in line and aligned with this overall economic model.
Gradually, we are seeing change. The last ten years, particularly, has seen the entrepreneurial spirit being un-caged especially tech entrepreneurship. VCs are backing audacious ideas in India. Cynics may argue that many of them are copy-cat ideas that have worked in the west. However, we are going beyond providing outsourced services to the west and seriously attempting to solve local problems. A country comes of age when entrepreneurs go after local problems in earnest and there is no dearth of capital to support them. The other pieces are slowly realigning and changing direction in a way that is conducive for creativity and big thinking.
If Steve Wozniack looks at large traditional IT outsourcing companies and concludes that no earth shattering tech idea would emerge from them, I might tend to agree. However, if he concludes that no great tech company will emerge from India I would disagree. Not out of any patriotic zeal, but simply because I think we can genuinely expect a great tech company to emerge from India.
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7 年Hari It’s a nice point of view. Indeed I would be most happy to see India emerge as a hub for technical excellence. Yes, we are seeing change. But the fundamental drivers and enablers for growth of a global tech company are yet to evolve completely. Quality education in schools and universities spearhead the spirit of enquiry and creativity, so essential for innovation. The research in universities should be the hub of this innovative culture. I don’t think we can boast of such institutions which drive our industries. The R&D culture, if one were to go by the results of DRDO, leaves a lot to be desired. You have a point when you say that the education system has produced several smart leaders who have gone on to head global tech companies. But, heading an established global tech company and creating a new tech company is a completely different ball game. Our education system adapted itself since the 90s to cater to the emerging IT ecosystem but managed to address only the lower end of the system as service providers and hubs for outsourcing. We need to aim higher. Yes, the tender green shoots of tech entrepreneurship are visible and need to be fostered with the right vision for growth.
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7 年But i am agree with Steve Wozniack and its true Indian education system does not encourage creativity. (especially in field of Engineering)
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7 年Where do you think is India in the startup evolution cycle? I think India is going through its third wave. The first wave were companies from India selling software services. There were companies in the 1990s like Infosys and?Wipro. The second was local companies selling to local customer market, such as?Ola?andFlipkart. The third wave is happening and I see that it will become a big wave. These are companies out of India that will sell to the global market again, but instead of IT services, it will be software products. For a long time in India, the challenge was that we did not have enough product talent. It is no longer the problem. I see great products being built. The engineering talent, product management, UX design talent...all things you need to build good products are here. The things that companies are struggling with is how to sell to global market. That challenge has to be overcome. It will take time. My personal goal is to help companies get through that challenge. https://m-economictimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/m.economictimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/india-needs-to-cultivate-pay-forward-culture-jyoti-bansal/amp_articleshow/63133539.cms
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7 年You can disagree or you can listen. If he has this opinion chances are many others do as well. Steve has worked with highly creative people. The most profitable company in the world is the result. Listening includes things you don't like to hear. Most who commented listened to what The Woz had to say.
The issues are more complex and a simplistic assessment of "we are doing this at IIT-M" or "we do jugaad" is simplistic at best or missing the point completely at worst. First, it's a mistake to presume America stands alone in the matter of innovation and somehow we have to imitate them. It is true, especially after WW II, the US led the world on most metrics relating to engineering, innovation, enterprise, etc. Those were the days, coming out of the European war, of OSD, DARPA, Bell Labs, etc. Those times have largely disappeared and the trend has moved away from large national labs to large corporations and individual startups. Aside from the US, there have been remarkable innovation coming out of Japan, South Korea, Germany, and lately Israel - from varying circumstances and for many reasons. The mistake we make is in conflating startup activity with innovations. On this dimension alone, the only country that perhaps is similar to the US experience is Israel. The former has been driven by individual enterprise, risk tolerance, spirit of experimentation, etc while the latter has been driven by a unique military draft that created internal bonds and active fostering of such bonds when individuals came out of industry.