Innovation, Competitiveness and Economic Development: Understanding the Situation for Startups in India

Speakers

Dr. Amit Kapoor

President, Institute for Competitiveness, India

Dr. Amit Kapoor is Honorary Chairman at Institute for Competitiveness, India; President of India Council on Competitiveness and Editor-in-Chief of Thinkers. He is as well the chair for the Social Progress Imperative & Shared Value Initiative in India and sits on the board of Competitiveness initiatives in Mexico, Netherlands, Italy & France and University of Vermont’s SEMBA Advisory Board. In addition to being advisor to Thinkers50 and participant with the Global Solutions Network, he is an affiliate faculty for the Microeconomics of Competitiveness & Value Based Health Care Delivery courses of Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness, Harvard Business School and an instructor with Harvard Business Publishing in the area of Strategy, Competitiveness and Business Models. He has been inducted into the Competitiveness Hall of Fame which is administered by Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School.

He has worked with NITI Aayog on developing the ease of living index Indian districts; state innovation index for states of India; police effectiveness index and has recently presented his work on cluster mapping in India to Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister. In addition he sits on the committee assessing the performance of R&D Institutions in India that is housed at NITI and headed by Shri V.K. Saraswat.

Amit is a Ph.D. in Industrial Economics and Business Strategy and has received the Ruth Greene Memorial Award winner for writing the best case of the year, by North American Case Research Association (NACRA). He has been invited by Kennedy School of Government & Harvard Law School, Harvard University; Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, World Economic Forum to present his views on various issues and themes like strategy, outsourcing and economic development in addition to speaking at TEDx and Unreasonable Thinking Summit.

Amit is the author of the bestseller “Riding the Tiger”, which he has co-authored with Wilfried Aulber and published by Penguin Random House. His forthcoming book titled “The Age of Awakening” (with Penguin Random House in November, 2018) focuses on India’s Economic History and is precursor to the title “India’s Competitiveness” that he proposes to publish by 2019. He is also the author of India City Competitiveness Report, India State Competitiveness Report, India Manufacturing Competitiveness Report, India State Sustainability Report, Livability Report et al. that are published on a periodic basis.

He is also a columnist with IANS in addition to his contributions being published by Economic Times, Hindu, Business Insider, Hindu Business Line, Mint, Financial Express, Outlook Business, Governance Now, Business Today et al. In all, he has written over 500 opinion pieces apart from publishing academic research (cases and artciles). Based on his work three awards have been constituted within the country titled State Competitiveness Awards  wherein the Chief Ministers are awarded; City Competitiveness Awards wherein City Heads are awarded and Institute for Competitiveness Strategy Awards wherein the corporates are awarded for their strategic acumen. He chairs the jury and curates Porter Prize in addition to curating events like National Competitiveness Forum, Shared Value Summit, Thinkers 50 (India) etc. As for his interest in entrepreneurship he is keen investor and has seed funded enterprises like Business World, Mettl, Soul Ace, Nautilus et al. He tweets @kautiliya and can be contacted at amit@amitkapoor.com.