| Type | Conference presentation |
| Event | FGKS Eighth Annual Conference |
| Organized by | Forum for Global Knowledge Sharing |
| Location | IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India |
| Date | October 25–27, 2013 |
| Slides | Download the presentation (PDF) |
A talk delivered at the Eighth Annual International Conference of the Forum for Global Knowledge Sharing, IIT Bombay (October 25–27, 2013).
In short: Where India’s inventive activity actually happens — how patenting clusters in a handful of states, and what regional conditions explain that concentration.
About the talk
This presentation mapped the geography of patenting in India — examining how patenting activity is distributed across Indian states and what regional factors drive those patterns. By treating patents as a marker of inventive and innovative capacity, the talk showed how unevenly that capacity is spread across the country, and explored why some regions emerged as innovation hubs while others did not.
What the talk covered
- Patenting is highly concentrated — inventive activity clustered in a small number of states, with western and southern India accounting for the bulk of patents.
- The patent-regime shift mattered — patterns evolved around India’s move to a stronger (product-patent) regime in 2005, with the concentration intensifying afterward.
- Regional conditions explain the map — the presence of R&D infrastructure, skilled labour, industrial clusters, and research institutions shaped where patenting occurred.
- Innovation hubs and lagging regions — the geography points to self-reinforcing innovation centres, and to the challenge of broadening inventive capacity beyond them.
Get the slides
The full presentation is available as a PDF:
⇩ Download the presentation (PDF)
Related research on this site
This presentation led to the author’s published work:
- The Geography of Patenting in India: Patterns and Determinants — the full journal article (Metamorphosis: A Journal of Management Research, 2014).