KOZHIKODE: How many organisations will survive the fourth industrial revolution? What are the opportunities for setting up and managing such organisations? Who will survive and lead? Are start-ups the answer?
An interactive session on Management in the Age of Disruption: the Emerging Role of Start-ups, led by Saji Gopinath, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Kerala Startup Mission, and Director, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management - Kerala, on Monday offered answers to them. The programme was organised by the Calicut Management Association.
Mr. Gopinath said the government envisaged a comprehensive model to encourage entrepreneurship and start-ups with the participation of multiple stakeholders. The start-up ecosystem developed for students and professionals as well as and social and rural sectors includes sustainable enterprise development, funding and value-creation, incubation and acceleration, and idea and knowledge, he added.
According to him, the start-up policy of the State aims at the right use of technology. Evangelising and enabling, creation and development, and growth and graduation are the activities envisaged. Of the 757 technology start-ups, 51.1 % are in software, 7.79 % in health, 6.87 in education technology, 3.96 in fintech, and 0.79 % in gaming.
Incubators
Mr. Gopinath said the State had developed several incubators under its start-up mission. While Thiruvananthapuram has a 200-seater incubator at Technopark, besides a fablab and a future technologies lab, Kochi has a 13-acre technology innovation zone, electronic incubator (maker village), and NASSCOM start-up warehouse. Kozhikode has key accelerator and incubator and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) applications accelerator. According to him, the fourth industrial revolution involves a range of new technologies that fuse the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies, and industries. It is characterised by exponential technologies and new behavioural realities. Thus, the fourth industrial revolution technologies are disruptive, open, democratised, and sustainability focused.
“Humanoids, IoT devices, artificial intelligence and virtual reality products come under disruptive technologies. The disruptions in the new world will be in the form of driver-less cars, home-cleaning robots, audio-based task execution, auto programming, and 3D printing. The others are micro grids and solar power,” he said.