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US President Joe <keyword id="60973" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="biden" source="Orion">Biden</keyword> has appointed more than 130 Indian-Americans to key positions in his administration so far, the best representation from the community that makes up around one per cent of the American population. In doing so he has not only fulfilled his promise to the community that he had made as a presidential candidate in 2020, but also shattered the record of his predecessor Donald Trump who had appointed more than 80 Indian-Americans and his previous boss Barack Obama, who had appointed over 60 Indian-Americans to key positions during his eight years of presidency. More than 40 Indian-Americans has been elected at various state and federal levels including four in the US House of Representatives. Not to miss the more than 20 Indian-Americans leading top US companies. While the first-ever presidential appointment was done during the time of Ronald Regan, this time Biden has appointed Indian-Americans to almost all departments and agencies of his administration. "Indian-Americans have been imbued with the sense of seva (service) and this is reflected in their enthusiasm to pursue positions in public service instead of the private sector," Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur, philanthropist and venture capitalist M R Rangaswami told PTI. "The Biden administration has now appointed or nominated the largest group to date and needless to say we are proud of our people and their accomplishments for the United States," Rangaswami said. Rangaswami is founder and head of <keyword id="1530020" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="indiaspora" source="Orion">Indiaspora</keyword>, a US-based global organization for Indian-origin leaders. Indiaspora keeps a track of Indian-origin leaders. Biden, who has maintained a close relationship with the community since his Senator days, often jokes around about his Indian relationship. He made history in 2020 by selecting Indian-origin Kamala Harris as his running mate. The list of Indian-Americans in the White House as compiled by Indiaspora reflects that there would be only a few meetings inside the White House or in Biden's Oval Office that would not have an Indian-American presence. His speech writer is <keyword id="600122" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="vinay-reddy" source="Orion">Vinay Reddy</keyword>, while his main advisor on COVID-19 is Dr Ashish Jha, his advisor on climate policy is <keyword id="35801" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="sonia-aggarwal" source="Orion">Sonia Aggarwal</keyword>, special assistant on criminal justice is Chiraag Bains, Kiran Ahuja heads the Office of Personnel Management, Neera Tanden is his senior advisor, and Rahul Gupta is his drug czar. Last week when India's Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, hosted a reception at India House on the occasion of Independence Day, Indian-Americans from his administration were representing almost all major branches of the US government. <keyword id="14795772" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="young-vedant-patel" source="Orion">Young Vedant Patel</keyword> is now the Deputy Spokesperson at the Department of State, while Garima Verma is the Digital Director in the Office of the First Lady. Biden has also nominated several Indian-Americans to key ambassadorial positions. According to the list prepared by Indiaspora, more than 40 Indian-Americans have been elected to various offices across the country. Four are in the House of Representatives -- Dr Ami Bera, Ro Khanna, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Pramila Jayapal. This includes four Mayors. Led by Indian-Americans Sunder Pichai of Google and <keyword id="276564" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="satya-nadella" source="Orion">Satya Nadella</keyword> of Microsoft, there are over two dozen Indian-Americans heading US companies. Among others include Shantanu Narayen of Adobe, Vivek Lall of General Atomics, Punit Renjen of Deloitte, Raj Subramaniam of FedEx. SEE ALSO : <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/tiruppur-garment-industry-in-crisis-as-a-steep-rise-in-yarn-prices/articleshow/93743444.cms">Tiruppur garment industry in crisis as a steep rise in yarn prices</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/dreamfolks-services-ipo-opens-today-check-out-important-details-related-to-the-ipo/articleshow/93740178.cms">DreamFolks Services IPO opens today — Check out important details related to the IPO</a>

Over 130 Indian-Americans hold key positions in Biden administration, and it's a record

As individuals, Indians are resourceful, creative and smart. In a supportive context, such as <keyword id="6357722" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="silicon-valley">Silicon Valley</keyword> they have shown that they can play critical roles in the most innovative companies. But, here in <keyword id="3658" type="COUNTRY" weightage="20" keywordseo="India">India</keyword>, our innovation output is significantly below our potential. My work on innovation has focused on identifying the barriers to innovation in India, and seeking pathways at the level of both the nation and the firm to channelize our creative potential into a more systematic and sustainable innovation output. 
 
The Big Picture 
International comparative studies of innovation consistently place India far below the top of the innovation charts. In the latest INSEAD-WIPO Global Innovation Index (2013), India ranks #66. Rather than going up the ladder, India is actually sliding down – we slipped two positions in the last year and, this is in spite of the Government of India declaring this the decade of innovation! 
 
A simple way of understanding innovation output is to think in terms of supply side factors, processes and capabilities, and demand side factors. At the national level, since liberalization began over two decade ago, the demand for innovation has grown. Disposable incomes are up, the government is looking for low cost solutions to knotty public problems, and the legal systems for protection of inventors’ rights, are now better aligned with those in rest of the world. But India still faces challenges on the supply side, and in the capabilities of organizations to use the inputs available for innovative outcomes. 
 
Supply side issues include the failure of the education system to rise up to the challenge of building a well-trained work force that can undertake creative problem-solving, lack of adequate seed capital to take ideas to prototypes, and the absence of a supportive infrastructure for innovation. But, perhaps the biggest supply side problem is India’s poor research base – a recent study commissioned by India’s Department of Science &amp; Technology shows that India’s research output is not cited at a level above the global average in a single academic discipline. 
 The main agent of innovation in a capitalist <keyword id="34412" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="economy">economy</keyword> is the firm. This is the entity that links ideas with the market. Unfortunately, firms in India have been slow to develop systematic innovation capabilities, preferring to rely on traditional methods of creative improvisation such as jugaad. While jugaad may be attractive to large multinational firms whose processes have become too rigid and inflexible, Indian firms (with a few notable exceptions) face the opposite challenge – their innovation processes are too fluid and under-developed to facilitate the transformation of the creative energies of their employees into a steady stream of innovative products and services. Unfortunately, while multinational R&amp;D and engineering subsidiaries in India have the potential to do more innovative work, their innovation tends to be circumscribed by the roles mandated by their parents. 
 Why don’t Indian organizations spend more effort in developing better innovation capabilities? Family ownership appears to be a barrier, unless the family members involved in the business have a penchant for innovation (e.g. Dr. <keyword id="253203" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Anji-Reddy">Anji Reddy</keyword> and Dr. <keyword id="76415" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Parvinder-Singh">Parvinder Singh</keyword> at DRL and Ranbaxy respectively). More traditional family owners lack a deep understanding of either technology or customer needs, two of the key starting points for innovation. 
 
But there are also social and cultural forces at work that impede the creation of systematic innovation capabilities within firms. Research on management in India has shown that Indian companies’ efforts at innovation are impeded by poor teamwork; the enduring importance of upward hierarchical progression in a traditional society that leads to individuals moving out of individual contributor roles too early; a “brahminical attitude” that gives brainwork a superior position over physical work and results in ideation being lionised but experimentation looked down upon. Additionally, a weak systems and strategic orientation that results in the absence of appropriate change paradigms; a low tolerance of failure; a lack of confidence in innovation capabilities; a failure to positively reinforce innovation efforts; and a strong need for control that comes in the way of joint working with other organisations, all are impediments to innovation in India. 
 
Accelerating the Pace of Change 
Some of these factors are changing over time, but the change is slow. What can India do to accelerate the pace of change? 
I believe there are four priorities starting with a focus on the creation of a critical mass of new generation firms, started by young entrepreneurs. These youngsters would be relatively free of the baggage of our past and therefore more inclined to take on the challenge of genuine innovation. These firms need to be in sectors and application areas that go well beyond our traditional strengths like IT and services. 
The second priority is to provide the right incentives for institutions of higher education to change to become more research-oriented and more practice-oriented. 
 
The third priority is to change the nature of government’s support for research and development. The traditional model of government- owned, financed, and run research institutions needs to be replaced by competitive government grants to support R&amp;D in private institutions and small firms. The feasibility of this has already been proven by the schemes and programmes of the Department of Biotechnology, such as SBIRI and BIRAC. Such an approach needs to be extended to other sectors as well. 
 
The last but certainly not the least priority is to move India towards being a more knowledge-driven and science-intensive society. The solution to this problem lies as much with individuals as with the government. The next time your child has a project from school, get her to do it rather than doing it for her. Don’t accept superstitions and baseless rituals. Embrace the scientific method. 
 
Building Innovation Capabilities: The 8 Steps Approach The other part of the puzzle is building strong organizational innovation capabilities. Some Indian companies have already shown how this can be done. <keyword id="1643686" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Vinay-Dabholkar">Vinay Dabholkar</keyword> and I have captured the essence of these practices in our 8 Steps to Innovation framework. 
 
In our interaction with Indian companies, we learnt that they faced three major problems in making innovation a sustained activity. The first is what we call the pipeline problem – the absence of a steady stream of ideas that can drive their innovation engine. Some companies told us that they have managed to create a stream of ideas, but that many of the ideas seem to get lost in the system – this is the source of a second problem that we call the velocity problem. A set of companies more mature in the innovation process told us that their challenge is different – this is the third problem that we call the batting average problem, i.e., the absence of adequate business impact of innovation. 
 
Our 8 step framework seeks to address these three big problems. Building a pipeline involves getting more people across the organization to see innovation as a part of their job and to make it easy for them to share their ideas with the company. To facilitate this, we advocate 3 steps. The first is to lay the foundation for innovation. This is achieved by designing an idea management system that is aligned with the company’s culture, conducting periodic campaigns that create excitement and involvement around innovation, and training people in creative problem solving methods to help them unleash their creative potential. The second step is to create a “challenge book” – identify the problems on which the company should focus its innovation efforts. The third step is to encourage participation in innovation. Some of the ways of achieving this are identification and recognition of innovation role models; forming communities of practice; identifying and training innovation catalysts who can help people with ideas take these ideas forward; and judicious use of rewards and recognition to get people involved. 
 
Ideas don’t move forward because they remain untried and untested. The solution to this is to encourage and support quick, low-cost experimentation to test assumptions related to need, technology, production, and commercialization. Once a proof-of-concept has been established, the barrier often shifts to the resources needed to take the innovation forward. Champions provide credibility and support and help overcome this barrier. Moving towards commercialization is helped by applying the principles of experimentation to the business model as well. 
 
Getting a bigger bang out of innovation – or enhancing the batting average as we call it – depends on two sets of actions. The first set is related to making the innovation successful, and consists of the use of innovation sandbox approaches to do intense experimentation within the tight expectations of the market; the use of platform approaches to help capture value from one innovation across multiple application areas; and sourcing ideas from outside the company (open innovation) to complement the company’s ideas and complete the innovation process. The second set relates to managing risk. Understanding the history of similar innovations, awareness of the baseline success rate of such innovations, and doing a premortem are some useful ways of managing the risk involved. Other approaches include a portfolio orientation and having a vigorous pipeline to avoid over-dependence on a single innovation. 
 We found successful Indian companies practising several of the approaches we have described above. <keyword id="6359783" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Bajaj-Auto">Bajaj Auto</keyword> has been very effective at defining the right challenge book leading to market-dominating products such as the Pulsar. <keyword id="10899" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Titan-Industries">Titan Industries</keyword> has been a leader in training employees to participate in the innovation process and launching annual campaigns. Cognizant Technology Solutions has also been strong on participation, and has trained an impressive “army” of catalysts. <keyword id="42747" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Tata-Motors">Tata Motors</keyword> has used innovation sandboxes effectively, <keyword id="6354512" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Infosys">Infosys</keyword> has a portfolio of effective innovation platforms, and Eureka Forbes has used open innovation to its advantage. Clearly where there is a will, Indian companies have found a way to build their innovative capabilities. 
 
(The author of this article is Rishikesh T. Krishnan. His main areas of interest are strategy and innovation. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania (Fall 2008), and at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad (2011-12). This article was contributed to Thinkers, a quarterly thought leadership magazine that features the brightest thinkers in the areas of economics and governance, philosophy and literature, science and technology, and management. To learn more about the magazine, please visit: <a href="http://www.thinkers.in/">www.thinkers.in</a> ) 
 
Image: thinkstock

Thinkers/Thinkers 50: Going beyond Jugaad, can India build a systematic innovation capability?

A total of six murders, including that of an eight-month-old infant, within a week's time, begs an answer to the question every Indian wants to know - is the community safe in the US? The US is home to more than 4.5 million Indians, which is the highest-earning ethnic group in the country. President <keyword id="99719" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="joe-biden" source="Orion">Joe Biden</keyword> recently went on record to say: "It's amazing, Indian - of descent - Americans are taking over the country: you, my Vice President (<keyword id="180909" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="kamala-harris" source="Orion">Kamala Harris</keyword>), my speechwriter, Vinay (Vinay Reddy)... You guys are incredible!" Even as one grappled with the shock of four Sikh family members, within the age groups of eight months to 39 years, found dead in California, news of 20-year-old student Varun Manish Chheda stabbed to death on Purdue University campus, sent shockwaves running across the Indian community world over. Earlier this week, Gurpreet Kaur Dosanjh, a Walmart employee, was shot dead and lumped inside a car in a parking lot in San Jose, California. In June this year, Satnam Singh, 31, was shot dead while sitting in a parked SUV down the street from his home in New York. This came days after Sai Charan Nakka, a 25-year-old techie from Telangana, was killed after sustaining an apparent gunshot wound to his head in Maryland Apart from the gruesome killings, Indian Americans have been consistently battling racial taunts, assaults, hate crime robberies, and vandalism of their properties. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 161 anti-Asian <keyword id="6463069" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="hate-crimes" source="Orion">hate crimes</keyword> took place in 2019, which rose to 279 in 2020. Giving a religious break-up, the FBI said that 54 anti-Sikh crimes occurred in 2019, which rose to 89 in 2020. Anti-Asian hate crime increased by 339 per cent last year compared to the year before, with New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities surpassing their record numbers in 2020, according to research by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. Late in August, four Indian American women were told that they were "ruining" America and should "go back to India" by a Mexican-American woman in Texas. In the same month, Krishnan Jayaraman was racially abused and called a "disgusting Hindu" by Californian Rajinder Singh in a Taco Bell outlet in Fremont. Community members have also expressed concerns over multiple brazen attacks on Mahatma Gandhi's statue in New York and other US cities. "Such bigoted attacks motivated by <keyword id="44060" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="racism" source="Orion">racism</keyword>, xenophobia, and other forms of hate victimise not only those directly targeted by them but also broader communities through creating an atmosphere of fear and danger," Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi had said recently. Last month, Indian-Americans held a peaceful protest at Time Square against the recent spurt in hate crimes and instances of vandalism of the Gandhi statue in the city. An Indian American Attitudes Survey released last year found that "one in two Indian-Americans reports being discriminated against in the past one year, with discrimination based on skin colour identified as the most common form of bias". Somewhat surprisingly, Indian-Americans born in the US are much more likely to report being victims of discrimination than their foreign-born counterparts," the survey, supported by Carnegie Endowment, said. Biden had spoken strongly against hate crimes at a recent event against racism. It remains to be seen what Biden, who boasts of having appointed more than 130 Indian-Americans to key positions in his administration so far, does now for the community that has made significant contributions to this great landscape. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/threats-to-mukesh-ambanis-family-one-held-from-bihar/articleshow/94676568.cms">Threats to Mukesh Ambani's family: one held from Bihar</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/will-consider-kerala-govt-proposal-for-world-peace-conference-nobel-peace-centre/articleshow/94671685.cms">Will consider Kerala govt proposal for World Peace Conference: Nobel Peace Centre</a>

Half a dozen murders in a week send shockwaves across Indian community in US

<ul class="summary-list"><li>President Joe Biden met with historians at the White House last week, The Washington Post reported.</li><li>People familiar with the conversation said the historians warned Biden about totalitarianism's rise.</li></ul>President Joe Biden privately met with a group of historians at the White House last week who warned him about ongoing threats to democracy, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/10/biden-us-historians-democracy-threat/">The Washington Post</a> reported Wednesday.Sources familiar with the August 4 meeting, which was said to have lasted nearly two hours, told the outlet the experts described the current moment as among the most dangerous to democracy in modern history.The people in the meeting were said to have included the Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz, the University of Virginia historian Allida Black, the journalist Anne Applebaum, and the presidential historian Michael Beschloss. Speechwriters for Biden, including Vinay Reddy and Jon Meacham, and the White House senior advisor Anita Dunn were also said to have attended.The small group almost exclusively discussed totalitarianism around the world and threats to American democracy, according to the Post.The outlet reported the scholars compared the current state of affairs to the era that preceded the American Civil War, as well as the period before World War II when fascist movements emerged, specifically noting Abraham Lincoln's 1860 election and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1940 election.Some of the people associated with the meeting have spoken publicly about threats to democracy. Applebaum, a staff writer at The Atlantic, published a book in 2020 called "<a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FTwilight-Democracy-Seductive-Lure-Authoritarianism%2Fdp%2F0385545800%2Fref%3Dasc_df_0385545800%2F%3Ftag%3Dhyprod-20%26linkCode%3Ddf0%26hvadid%3D509360428262%26hvpos%3D%26hvnetw%3Dg%26hvrand%3D17641683158751117289%26hvpone%3D%26hvptwo%3D%26hvqmt%3D%26hvdev%3Dc%26hvdvcmdl%3D%26hvlocint%3D%26hvlocphy%3D9067609%26hvtargid%3Dpla-919046204080%26psc%3D1">Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism</a>" about the rise of right-wing populism and democratic decline.The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.The meeting was in step with Biden's habit of seeking outside experts to provide guidance on domestic and foreign-policy issues. He also met with Bill Clinton in May to discuss inflation and the midterms and with a group of foreign-policy experts in January when the US anticipated Russia's invasion of Ukraine.The meetings also continue a tradition of US presidents seeking big-picture context from historians that started with Ronald Reagan but stalled under Donald Trump, according to the Post.Historians have publicly been sounding the alarm on threats to democracy in recent years, especially since the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.The historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat told <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/interview-historian-ruth-ben-ghiat-on-donald-trumps-attempted-coup-2022-6">Insider's Charles R. Davis</a> in June that the Capitol attack, which she described as an attempted coup, still posed a threat to US democracy. Ken Hughes, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-expert-compares-contrasts-jan-6-and-watergate-hearings-trump-2022-7">another historian, who is an expert on Watergate,</a> told Insider's Erin Snodgrass in July that democracy was in a "dangerous" position as the systems that usually protected against a presidential abuses of power were no longer functioning.

Biden met with historians who warned him about threats to democracy and compared the current moment to the pre-Civil War era, report says

New York, An expert on energy and climate change, <keyword id="35801" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sonia-Aggarwal">Sonia Aggarwal</keyword>, was named on Thursday by President-elect <keyword id="99719" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Joe-Biden">Joe Biden</keyword> as the senior advisor for climate policy and innovation, the latest of several key Indian American nominees for his administration. She led America's Power Plan, bringing together 200 electricity policy experts, at <keyword id="3174443" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Energy-Innovation">Energy Innovation</keyword>, of which she was a co-founder and Vice President, according to the biography from Biden's <keyword id="3872383" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="transition-team">transition team</keyword>. Aggarwal also directed the team that developed the Energy Policy Simulator to analyse the environmental, economic, and public health impacts of climate and energy policies Earlier, she managed global research at ClimateWorks Foundation, "where she worked on the McKinsey carbon abatement cost curves and led research for the American Energy Innovation Council", the biography said. Born and raised in Ohio, Aggarwal has a masters at Stanford University in civil engineering. Indian Americans named to important positions in the administration of Biden, who will take over as President, and <keyword id="180909" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kamala-Harris">Kamala Harris</keyword>, as Vice President next Wednesday, include Neera Tanden, who will be the director of the Office of Management and Budget with cabinet rank, and Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, both of whom will have to be confirmed in their positions by the Senate, and Vedant Patel, to be his assistant press secretary, Vinay Reddy to be the director of speechwriting and Gautam Raghavan, to be the deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel. Among others are: Atul Gawande and Celine Gounder, members of the COVID-19 task force; Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council; Sabrina Singh, deputy press secretary for Harris; Mala Adiga, policy director for Jill Biden, who will become the First Lady, and Maju Varghese, executive director of their inauguration -- the swearing-in ceremony and the festivities around it. At the powerful National Security Council, the nominees are Tarun Chhabra, senior director for technology and national security; Sumona Guha, senior director for South Asia, and Shanthi Kalathil, coordinator for Democracy and Human Rights. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis) --IANS al/vd

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Over 130 Indian-Americans hold key positions in Biden administration, and it's a record

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Thinkers/Thinkers 50: Going beyond Jugaad, can India build a systematic innovation capability?

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Half a dozen murders in a week send shockwaves across Indian community in US

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Biden met with historians who warned him about threats to democracy and compared the current moment to the pre-Civil War era, report says

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Home to India's Silicon Valley Karnataka swept by Modi wave

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