India Inside

4   Process InnovationAn Injection of Intelligence

PROCESS INNOVATIONS, or improvements in the way something is produced (in contrast with product innovations, which pertain to what is being produced), are typically invisible to end consumers. India has a long history of process innovations in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, in which the absence of product patents forced (or, we might say, seduced) Indian companies to focus their R&D efforts on process reengineering. However, in several new domains today, Indian process innovations are coming to the fore and might grow to become visible—if not to end consumers, certainly to global customers. Surprisingly, these process innovations tend to originate in the less glamorous parts of the economy—generic ...