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SRITNE Spotlight
Welcome!
I am pleased to share with you – SRITNE Spotlight, an initiative at Srini Raju Centre for IT & the Networked Economy to keep our stakeholders informed about the various research activities and programmes carried out by the centre. We aim to publish this newsletter every quarter and highlight important updates from our research centre along with current research and other information about emerging technologies that you may find useful. The newsletter has been organized into the following sections:
  1. Research Spotlight: This issue features the following research projects conducted by our centre:
    • The impact of AI on the Indian Labour Market
    • Capacity Building at the Grassroots
  2. TechTalks & Podcast
  3. Events and Programmes
I encourage you to send your feedback and feel free to share suggestions about how we can incorporate more useful information as we continue to build this newsletter in future.
Best regards,
Deepa Mani
Area Leader and Professor, Information Systems, Executive Director - Srini Raju Centre for IT & the Networked Economy (SRITNE), Indian School of Business.
Research Spotlight
The Impact of AI on the Indian Labour Market
The interactions between machines and humans and, in turn, the impacts of AI on labour markets remains under-investigated, especially in the context of emerging economies such as India. In the last two quarters, two complementary surveys were completed: (1) survey on Suitability of Machine Learning (SML) of over 3,000 people across more than 100 occupations, and (2) survey of senior executives from 300 companies, who have adopted AI in their workflow. The former was used to assess the vulnerability of different occupations across sectors in India.
The SML index drove key policy insights during the COVID-19 lockdown about which sectors and districts to open up. The index continues to fuel work on AI and labour markets. The latter survey enhances our understanding of organisational investments that complement AI investments to create value.
Marketplace for the Informal Economy
Migrant workers constitute one of the most vulnerable segments of India’s “informal sector”: they add up to 80 percent of the country's workforce with a third of them working as casual labour.1 With the onset of lockdown due to coronavirus earlier this year, many of these workers have returned to their native towns and villages due to their inability to earn daily wages.2 For policymakers, addressing the issues faced by migrant workers is challenging since no details about their skills or work experiences exist or even if they do, are not captured in a standardised form that facilitates their mobility and redeployment in the labour market.
Informal workers also lack access to an employment marketplace like LinkedIn or Naukri that, connects them with employers – public and private, skill providers and emerging job opportunities. Given the ubiquitous access to devices and the Internet across the country, the informal sector will be able to adopt and successfully exploit such an on-demand employment platform. Rich data on the worker’s skills, past work experiences, job attributes and market trends can empower workers with appropriate information and find prospective employers on the platform. Such a government-led employment marketplace can also double up for large-scale human capital development through dissemination of valuable skilling programs that play a critical role in the shift from self-employment at subsistence levels in the informal sector to wage employment in the formal sector for the country.3,4
1 COVID-19 Lockdown Puts Poor at Risk
2 India racked by greatest exodus since partition due to coronavirus
3 Building Skills in the Informal Sector, Richard Walther, UNESCO, 2011
4 Perspectives on Labour Economics for Development, Sandrine Cazes and Sher Verick, ILO, 2013
SRITNE is pleased to announce that the centre will be presenting the following essential components of such an employment marketplace for the informal economy:
  1. Job-matching portal:
    • Match employers and employees using rich data on worker characteristics, job and industry attributes
    • Provide frequent, high-resolution analytics that will empower the informal worker and organizations
  2. Skill Passport
    • A detailed Skill-Competency Matrix for every worker
    • Allow workers to demonstrate skills & competencies for tasks across various occupations and sectors, but also provide for worker mobility across states
  3. Capacity building
    • Skilling and certification programmes offering with varying degrees of competency for individuals and SMEs.
  4. Skills Policy.
    • On an ongoing basis, we aim to conduct an impact assessment of the employment marketplace and skilling program on the informal sector: increased employment opportunities, wage growth, productivity, among others such.
    • The results of this assessment will inform policy-and decision-makers in the Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) on the state of the informal economy in the state and design evidence-based interventions and policies.
To achieve the proposed scope of work, ISB has committed a multi-disciplinary research team whose expertise spans diverse areas, notably, Marketing, Information Systems, Data Sciences, and Economics. We will also attempt to complement this in-house team with an ecosystem of technology partnerships with leading technology companies.
Programme Spotlight
Capacity building at the Grassroots
Industrial Transformation of AP
Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector has emerged as a highly vibrant and dynamic sector of the Indian economy over the last five decades. MSMEs not only play crucial role in providing large employment opportunities at comparatively lower capital cost than large industries but also help in industrialization of rural & backward areas, thereby, reducing regional imbalances, assuring more equitable distribution of national income and wealth. MSMEs are complementary to large industries as ancillary units and this sector contributes enormously to the socio-economic development of the country.1
SRITNE has contributed extant research on factors that limit growth and scale of MSMEs. To alleviate these factors, we are developing a skilling programme to aid the recovery and revival of MSMEs and build their digital resilience to pandemic-like situations.
This programme will deepen participants’ understanding of digital business models and familiarise them with necessary strategies for the digital economy to generate superior business outcomes. Additionally, participants will gain insights about the functional strategies, leadership skills required for business revival, and eventually building digital resilience.
The programme is planned for 300 MSMEs that will be distributed into six cohorts.
Upcoming Research
Launching Soon: Real-Time Indices of Economic Activity
Decision-makers across the public and private sectors need accurate and timely information on economic activity for effective action and interventions. At present, the information available is highly fragmented, privately held, and low in accuracy, making coordination among economic actors difficult. The cost of acquiring information and increasing its accuracy is borne privately, leading to asymmetry in the marketplace and an increase in transactions costs as well as the discount rate for future transactions. At the centre, we have started to develop indices of economic activity, notably, consumption, employment and real estate, using multiple data sets and big data analytics at the highest possible spatial and temporal resolution in the informal as well as the formal sectors.
If you are interested in exploring an opportunity to collaborate and contribute towards this research initiative, please write to us at sritne@isb.edu.
TechTalks
Using High Frequency Electricity Data to look at Economic Activity Impact of Coronavirus Lockdown.
Our Research Associate - Ashutosh Dwivedi made some interesting observations in electricity consumption as a result of the impact of the Coronavirus lockdown.
You can check out the blog on our site: SRITNE TechTalks
SRITNE Podcast
Our Associate Director Praveen Mokkapati in conversation with Mr. Ravi Kanniganti who leads the Target Accelerator Programme. Here’s an excerpt from an interesting podcast on Innovation.
How has Corporate Innovation evolved in the recent past?
“Innovation activities are now helping to reinvent the business models.”
Corporate Innovation is evolving at a rapid pace and corporate innovation as a discipline has been around for decades. Today, innovation efforts have shifted from pure invention and R&D to full transformation. What it means it that, traditionally, innovation portfolios were more focused internally or more focused on incremental issues and some on the adjacent and very less focused on transformation. But that’s a big shift happening right now. More than half of the innovation initiatives are focused on the adjacent and transformational activities.
What are the critical enablers for a corporate to be successful with Open Innovation?
“You need to have an accurate business statement and you must be willing to provide the resources needed to support this solution.”
If we take Target as an example, Target Accelerator Programme is key to our strategy to innovate and stay ahead in this super-competitive retail landscape. We started this in 2014 and running this for last six years and we have been mentoring some other corporates on how to do this open innovation. One of the biggest challenge is to have clarity on why do you want to do open innovation. That means you need to have an accurate business statement and you must be willing to provide the resources needed to support this solution. Second biggest challenge to open innovation is to ensure whether your business is backing your innovation and ready to adopt it, deploy it and take it to the market.

All of our podcasts are available here.
Events
Oct 15, 2020
Report Launch: The Impact of AI on the Indian Labour Market
The Future of Work Summit showcased our recent research on AI and was jointly hosted by Intel India & Srini Raju Centre for IT & the Networked Economy (SRITNE) as part of Intel’s all.ai 2020 Summit, a virtual four-day conference in collaboration with the Govt. of India, Govt. of Telangana and IIIT-Hyderabad. The summit was uniquely positioned to leverage AI by revolutionizing policy to measuring impact.
In the concluding session of the Future of Work Summit, SRITNE-ISB and Intel launched the report titled, ‘The Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the Indian Labour Market.’ Commissioned by Intel India and conducted by the Srini Raju Centre for Information Technology and the Networked Economy (SRITNE) at ISB, the study assesses the size and scope of the impact of AI on businesses, including shifts in the quantum and nature of employment and human capital development. The findings of the report are based on two surveys:
  • A: Suitability of Machine Learning (SML) Survey among 3,099 employees across 106 Indian occupations designed to measure the suitability for machine learning for each occupation
  • B: AI and Future of Work Survey of 301 firms across Indian sectors that have adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI)/ Machine Learning (ML) in their workflows
Launch of AI Index Microsite:
Professor Deepa Mani concluded that further research emerged from the studies conducted for Intel India and emphasized on the centre’s vision to develop an AI-Index - a barometer for all decision-making related to research, education, employment and policy in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
The index will track and provide an unbiased and comprehensive data-analysis for researchers, industry executives and policymakers to further their understanding of the field of AI in India.

Visit ai-index.in to know more.
Nov 19, 2020
Panel Discussion: Remote Work and Employee Productivity – The Way Forward
Our recent study on AI and the Future of Work impelled us to extend the discussion about remote work and address the gaps in prior work and advance our understanding of such arrangements. Specifically, we brought in industry-specific perspective on how two important indicators of remote work efficacy - employee productivity and isolation - vary across jobs that differ in the need for human proximity and, therefore, exposure to social distancing policies.
The panel was headed by senior leaders in human resources across diverse technology sectors and moderated by Professor Ram Nidumolu (Clinical Professor, Organisational Behaviour)
Panellists:
Alpa Chandan, Senior Director – Human Resources, Target India
Jnanesh Kumar, Director – Employee Success, Salesforce.com
Uma Rao, Vice President – Human Resources, Ashok Leyland
With a rich and varied experience in their fields, they shared their perspective on how the lockdown has changed the way we work, view productivity and manage our well-being. They also shared valuable takeaways on the following:
  1. How to effectively track employee productivity?
  2. Is remote work cost-effective for certain occupations and sectors?
  3. Effecting a robust policy framework to facilitate remote work efficacy.
Dec 15, 2020
Panel Discussion: Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets (ICIS 2020 – SIG DITE Ancillary event)
A panel headed by experts across diverse sectors to talk about Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets.
ICIS (International Conference on Information Systems) is an annual conference of repute for academics and research-oriented practitioners in information systems. Under the umbrella of ICIS 2020 conducted by the Association of Information Systems, the event was hosted in collaboration with a Special Interest Group on Digital Innovation, Transformation, and Entrepreneurship (SIG DITE) as the newest addition to AIS Communities.
Moderated by ISB Faculty – Professor Anusha Sirigiri (Assistant Professor, Entrepreneurship), the discussion spanned technology enabled innovations that build resilient, scalable and high-growth enterprises. With inputs from policy makers to understand policies and interventions that foster technology-enabled entrepreneurship to achieve scale economies in untapped markets and create self-sustaining benefits in the long run, the stellar speaker line-up facilitated a brilliant exchange of ideas.

Panellists:
Dr. Dinesh Tyagi | Managing Director, CSC e-Governance Services
Madhurima Agarwal | Director, NetApp Excellerator
Phalgun Kompalli | Co-Founder, UpGrad
Rajeev Menon | Partner, Anthill Ventures
Programmes
Leading Digital Business Transformation and Innovation (LDBTI)
A highly differentiated, immersive, multi-module blended learning programme designed to meet dynamic digital leadership requirements in the age of Artificial Intelligence.
AI For Business
A 3-day intensive programme that will enable you to deliver competitive advantage through an integrative framework for AI implementation.
Business, Unlocked
A 3-day immersive programme crafted for the entrepreneur in you, whether you are starting a new business or driving intrapreneurship.
Taking the programme as a team help the firm’s executives be at the same level of understanding towards technology advances, makes firm better positioned to execute the digital transformation initiatives and amplifies the overall benefits to the firm.
Our centre also offers customized programmes for domain or firm-specific needs for mid-to-senior level executives.

Please write to us at sritne@isb.edu to design a custom programme for your organisation.

         
 
 
About us
 
Srini Raju Centre for IT and the Networked Economy (SRITNE) is a multi-disciplinary research centre aimed at fostering rigorous and relevant research, education and outreach that advances our understanding of how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) create value for business and society. The core activities of SRITNE are as follows:
  1. Research that addresses practical and policy questions related to the effective ICT selection, adoption, & exploitation
  2. Education that trains future leaders to leverage ICT for competitive success
  3. Dialogue with academics, industry, government and students though speaker series, conferences and symposia
For more details contact:
Ashwini Mistry: ashwini_mistry@isb.edu
 
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