DesiPundit

Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan’s latest column has raised quite a storm: on academic-industry collaboration in IITs.

On the Indian Economy blog Kaarthik asks,

This arrangement is fine from the point of view of Ajit, but what about the Professor, who has hardly been compensated for his research which has been commercialized? What incentive does he have to continue to churn out good and relevant research? Apart from recognition by the industry, and a mention in the papers, what more does he get compared to the professor down the corridor who has been vegetating ever since he was made a permanent faculty?

Abi declares Ajit Balakrishnan untrustworthy,

I have to call a foul here, because Balakrishnan’s charge is totally unsubstantiated. If he wants to make this charge stick, he must point out exactly where IIT-B failed, and what could have salvaged Rediff’s collaboration with Soumen’s group. If he has some experience with fruitful collaborations with other institutions, he could also point out how IIT-B handled things differently

Bongop’o'ndit attempts to find the middle ground,

One could speculate that for Mr Balakrishnan, going through the IIT system would have taken a few months time, which is eternity in the world of business. In that case, it was certainly a ‘near-impossible’ task for him to get his project kick-started (especially given that it relates to the cutting edge field of web search engines). It is possible too that IIT’s current system is more geared for collaborations with big companies, not for small start-ups. Given the quickly changing technology and economic landscapes, IITs (and other universities too) need to more nimble in responding to such needs