Mozilla Open Innovation Project

The Open Innovation Project aims to broaden the understanding of how open source beliefs and principles can be implemented in the Global South, specifically looking at the Indian Tech Ecosystem. In doing so we seek to understand how multiple players in India are currently availing or hope to avail resources in the country that can enable certain aspects of the open source software movement. Speci… more

The concept of innovation, specifically the notion of technology as a tool for the further propagation of innovation in society has been promoted extensively since the rise of the IT sector around the world (Johannessen, 1994). Firms that were seen as technology based or technology focussed often were seen as creating and enabling an innovation value chain, by virtue of their sector alone (Ganota… more

In this section we review the concepts of commons based peer production by Benkler, and Kelty’s recursive public definitions to understand how it could be reformatted and updated to provide more of a contextual understanding in the global south. In Benkler and Nissenbaum’s work, they articulate that a commons based peer is a socio economic system of production based in the digital environment (Be… more

We aimed to interrogate how organisations attempted to implement beliefs and practices of open source software movements and compared it with the new model we have defined as open innovation, taking into account infrastructure, platforms, policies and market standards that provided a context on which local innovators can build. more

India Stack Since 2009, the government of India has been building the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which was headed by Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys (DiBiasio, 2020, DigFingroup.com). It was under UIDAI that Aadhaar was created, which is seen by some as a revolutionary attempt to usher in a new era of digital productivity in the country, specifically in the finan… more

Clarity is required, when looking at the role of open innovation in the tech ecosystem in India, on how the ecosystem affects different stakeholders in different contexts and what innovation means in such situations. As highlighted in our sampling and methodology section we viewed three large demographics: undigitized, semi-digitized and completely digitised stakeholders in the tech sector in Ind… more

Beyond the digital divide and the enablers of such division there exists further stratification in tech based organisations in the country. As highlighted in the previous sections, funding plays a large role in the creation of tech organisations and their products. Often leading to the mushrooming of organisations that propose solutions mimicking or aiding a well funded tech company. more

From the other two sections we see two large forks in the road of the tech ecosystem in India, with VC funded startups whose focus is on growth and profits and semi-digitized entities that work with final stakeholders to create tech enabled solutions. However, according to our participants funding alone does not guarantee success and the absorption of a larger stake in the ecosystem. more