Innovation and International Business
Date- 16/11/2019
Time- 10-11 am
Venue- II MAIS, Central Block

The Department of International Studies and History organized a guest lecture on “Innovation and International Business” by Professor Buckley from Sheffield University, UK. His interests lie in International Comparative Management and on International Business and Strategy.

Professor Buckley stated that in this advanced age it is necessary to understand the need to innovate. The countries of the world play to showcase their best entrepreneurial drive and showcases their creativity via such credible and noteworthy inventions. The main challenge for innovation lies in the fact of lack of external and internal financial funding.

He made the students to actively participate and ponder over what does it mean to be innovative. He states that innovation is a key to improvement in quality of life and stressed on its vital reason on the non-availability of infinite resources and hence we must move towards sustainability. This would now differentiate from the existing technology and increases efficiency in both the product and process innovation. By virtue of this, one can observe that the economy improves both in terms of micro and macro developments.

Further, the idea was deconstructed by adding in three dimensions namely: Research and Development, Invention ad Innovation. Finally, he attempts to define and informs the audience that a critical element in Innovation is competition and it highlights the newness. Steve Jobs states that it is when in a competitive environment, can innovation distinguish between the leaders and the followers. This implies that the leader is one who has the madness and craze to explore and fill in the gaps by inventing and has to be bonded with a legal force by the government which needs to monitor and promote it. Since the advent of globalisation and nationalism, each nation attempts to spur its economic growth and accelerate it. This might also lead to capitalist tendencies. The last issue that was addressed was that of patent rights. This can be done by formal dialogues on sharing of innovative practices and one needs to be bound by ethical binaries and moral concerns.

The lecture was followed by an engaging Q&A session. Professor Buckley was presented with a token of appreciation by Dr Madhumati Deshpande followed by a vote of thanks.