Designing a creative and innovative India

Creativity is an enormously important resource for speeding up economic growth and human development, especially in Third World settings in which social transformation from traditionalism to modernity is urgent. This paper takes the view that Human Resource Management models need to be extended to embrace whole societies, not confined just to business organizations. It seeks to identify the factors that advance creativity and innovation in Third World societies, especially India. Based on the views of a number of scholars representing diverse disciplines, it develops a model of the factors that propel a society towards more creativity and innovation. It makes a preliminary face validity test of the model on a few societies known to be relatively highly innovative. On applying the model to India, it locates three key areas for accelerating creativity and innovation in India: government, educational institutions and civil society. The paper presents a number of suggestions on how creativity and innovation in Third World contexts can be spurred through innovation-enhancing design and functioning of government administration, educational bodies and civil society institutions.