Book Chapters

Srinivas, S. (forth.) “Innovation as a combinatorial process: Scarcity, Variety, Institutional Change” in J. Sutz and R. Arocena (Eds.) Book on Innovation and Development.

Abstract

It is commonplace to think of innovation as referring to a variety of products or those with novel technical features. This is what is usually advertised as innovative. But variety reflects much more of the flavor of societies, whether German or Nigerian. Indeed, much product development and product variety in industrialised societies emerge from heavily standardized conditions. Could this imply less variety in economic activity rather than more, and narrower, even if technically sophisticated, ways of doing things?

This chapter is focused on how innovation scholarship has arguably been straitjacketed into explanations of innovation arising from a narrow slice of the history of building technological capabilities in the history of newly industrial economies. These embedded learning networks and their characteristics, in a possible analytical rush for universal theory, have become divorced from the geography, culture, and histories of problem-solving which reflects innovation.

In our earlier collaboration (Srinivas and Sutz 2008), we recognized that a focus on the particularities of actually occurring innovation in so-called ‘developing’ countries, provided an unusual roadmap to analytical thinking on taxonomies of innovation. Not only were there many types of innovation underway in single countries, but in particular, ‘scarcity induced innovation’ was a category with a richness of cases. However, some types of scarcities that we identified were not recognized by the norms of industrialized innovation policy nor theory prevalent in a ‘catch up’ literature. This latter effort, although sympathetic to ‘outliers’ and which correctly recognized learning as a crucial element of economic development, continued to dwell on exemplars from today’s industrialized economies and their ‘good institutions’.

Srinivas, S. (2024). “Cupboard Full, Cupboard Empty: The Industrial Building Blocks of Covid-19 and Cancer Systems.” In: Banda, G., Mackintosh, M., Njeru, M.K., Makene, F.S., Srinivas, S. (eds) Cancer Care in Pandemic Times: Building Inclusive Local Health Security in Africa and India. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Open Access.

Read it here.


Abstract

Industrial organization is central to cancer care and local health security. This chapter shows why that is so, starting from the experiences of the author of working across health/industrial boundaries under pressure during the pandemic in India. India has a much stronger local industrial base and innovative capabilities than Kenya or Tanzania, yet it struggles to build on that advantage to improve access to timely cancer care for its population. The chapter’s framing challenges the reader to grasp the complexity of responsibility in designing viable policy to address the linkages and gaps between the industrial sector and the health system that uses the products.

Srinivas, S., Ghai, O., Rajadhyaksha, L. (2024). “Palliation Economics: The Industrial Organisation of Morphine in India.” In: Banda, G., Mackintosh, M., Njeru, M.K., Makene, F.S., Srinivas, S. (eds) Cancer Care in Pandemic Times: Building Inclusive Local Health Security in Africa and India. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Open Access.

Read it here.


Abstract

A shortage of medication for severe pain undermines cancer care—and other treatments—across India and Africa. In India however, the entire supply chain of industrial production of morphine is within the country, yet need remains unmet. This chapter identifies systemic institutional gaps between clinical training, decentralized care, ambition and scope of supply chain management, and difficulty in carving out national autonomy on palliation needs, that are preventing the resolution of this crisis. Tackling these institutional gaps could remove uncertainty for public and private firms making investment decisions, and provide clearer pathways to markets for pain management.

Kale, D., Srinivas, S., Banda, G. (2024). “Emerging Business Models in Cancer Diagnostic Startups in India and Lessons for African Countries.” In: Banda, G., Mackintosh, M., Njeru, M.K., Makene, F.S., Srinivas, S. (eds) Cancer Care in Pandemic Times: Building Inclusive Local Health Security in Africa and India. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Open Access.

Read it here.


Abstract

This chapter examines three innovative medical devices and diagnostics startups in India with potential for improving cancer care in low-resource health systems. The chapter describes and discusses their business model adaptations to India’s complex cancer care markets, and shows how early stage financial support, from government schemes, financial institutions, universities and venture capital, is instrumental in supporting entrepreneurship. However, firms struggle to capture value in later stages of technology commercialisation because of a lack of last-mile investment, medical culture and barriers to accessing the public healthcare market. Implications are drawn for industrial support in African contexts.

Evolutionary-Institutional Analysis and Industry-Based Methods in Social Policy
Book – Emerging Trends in Social Policy from the South (Bristol University Press)
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A first chapter by Smita Srinivas, “Evolutionary-Institutional Analysis and Industry-Based Methods in Social Policy” is part of the book Emerging Trends in Social Policy from the South, Bristol: Bristol University Press (Eds. Ilcheong Yi, Alexandra Kaasch, Kelly Stetter). The chapter frames the big opportunities in acknowledging and fine-tuning industrial dynamism in social policy design. The chapter argues explicitly against situating social policy as exclusively a labour issue which has been the dominant way in which such policy design has continued. Instead, using the pandemic and other examples, the chapter explains why we should think of social policy and especially health policy in new ways. With a focus on industrial dynamics and its technological features, the chapter situates the need for new thinking and practicalities of health benefits. Using perspectives from evolutionary and institutional economics, the chapter discusses the industrial dynamics through institutional and spatial footprint of actual benefits: Three domains that are fast changing are identified: Place (residence-based) entitlements, Work (labour identity) and Workplace (factory, mobile, or other work) entitlements. Social policy can no longer afford to be narrowly anchored to labour identity alone, and the chapter offers some new theory and methods perspective on the way forward for policy design in economic development.

A New Economics for Health
Book – Health of the Nation: Perspectives for a New India
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“It is a transformative fact today that most countries and their citizens draw on essential medicines and vaccines designed and manufactured and then traded across hundreds and often, thousands of miles. Health technologies include both mature and innovative products, in some cases, entirely disrupting patient experiences, the medical profession, and the organization of industries.
[…] A new economics for health focused on technological change and the evolutionary aspects of industrial organization in the health industry may therefore look different from health economics as we know it today.”

No Global South in Economic Development
Book – Routledge Companion to Planning in the Global South (Bhan, Srinivas, Watson Eds.)
Read more about the chapter by Smita Srinivas here

“My aim is to deepen the conversation about the title of the book, Companion to Planning in the Global South, and make two points. First, to caution that the ‘Global South’ label offers minimal analytical benefit as far as economic development plans are concerned, and what may appear to be the essential common empirical reality of developing countries is deceptive. This may help us better connect national contexts and development debates with what occurs in villages, towns, and cities. Post-colonial institutional contexts and global market pressures may simply be insufficient common conditions to make wider claims on what planning should do.”

Healthy Industries and Unhealthy Populations: Lessons from Indian Problem-Solving
Book – Making Medicines in Africa: The Political Economy of Industrializing for Local Health. Read more about it here

“The Indian health industry, with substantial pharmaceuticals and bio-pharmaceuticals capability, has been called ‘Supplier to the World’. This industry has had three defining policy environments running from 1950 to 2000, the last of which is arguably still ongoing.

These three environments are distinct market environments, in which the range of market instruments used has been notable and the public gains to which they have been put have been noteworthy.”

Demand and Innovation: Paths to Inclusive Development
Book – Innovation in India: Combining Economic Growth with Inclusive Development
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“The world is so full of technological innovations, and countries such as India have so many of them that we might be tempted to forget the genesis and effect of such innovations on ‘development.’ What kinds of inclusive societies can we plan for through such innovations? While most of the chapters in this book are concerned with knowledge and technology capability accumulation in different industrial sectors in India, this chapter starts at the other end, with questions: Whom is it for? How does it permeate our societies? Will it be enough? What analytical frames may help us?”