Knowledge origin, innovations and growth in ayurvedic bioprospection: references from Kerala

Presented at the GLOBELICS 6th International Conference 2008 22-24 September, Mexico City, Mexico.The recent manufacturing interest in traditional medical systems and biodiversity sectors is directly related to the profitable innovations that traditional knowledge can generate. In this context, this study attempts to understand the nature of knowledge origin and innovative process in the drug discovery process in both traditional knowledge and textual ayurveda based drugs. The analysis has been broadly contextualized in the premise that the traditional knowledge innovations are non-additive in character due to the lack of proper incentive structure available with knowledge holder, and hence this knowledge, which largely serve as a tacit raw material for bio-prospection involves huge costs in internalizing in to the production. While the firms have the option of cheap cost drug discovery from ayurvedic public knowledge, they are less incentivized to go for major bioprospection