New staff

On September 1st, 3 new staff joined our team. We're happy to have them with us and look forward to them posting their views on this blog soon.

Rajeev Surana, a Chemical Engineer and Marketing Management graduate has a deep passion for connecting innovation to markets which has to be enabled by creating an innovation ecosystem in India. This brings to the fore his 10+ years of varied work experience, the last as an entrepreneur providing recruitment & marketing solutions to the R&D Sector. He will be setting up the Technology Transfer & Licensing division which would be responsible for commercializing innovations in the L-RAMP programme.

Michelle Abraham, a Management postgraduate from IIFM-Bhopal, has joined L-RAMP to focus on external relations, including networking, scouting and interacting with nodal institutions. Michelle brings with her significant experience in development programmes including setting up and operating vocational training centres with an international NGO as well as monitoring and evaluation of a variety of government rural development programmes.

Sabyasachi Das, a post graduate and graduate of VIT, has joined L-RAMP to mentor our incubatees. Sabyasachi was a Sir Ratan Tata Trust Fellow which provided support and the opportunity to meet enthusiasts from different organizations and institutes. He has worked on different aspects of community health, especially on appropriate technology assessment for primary healthcare with organizations such as IISc-ASTRA, FRLHT and IIT-Madras. He was also a member of the Community Health Cell, Bangalore.

Aid is good, business is better

A piece from the President of Liberia on how development through enterprise is more efficient than development through aid.

The article is here.

5 Interesting Articles to Read

The last weeks have been exceedingly busy and so I haven't had time to post articles I've been saving as interesting - I post them here for your reading.

• The impact of overregulation on business
• The quiet Brazilian farming revolution
• The progress small states have made in economic reform
• The EU launches an initiative to bring the academic innovation engine back online
• Airtel launches a Rs. 200 crore (USD50M) Innovation Fund