It was during a rather interesting set of circumstances that I dropped by at IIT-Delhi for the second day of Barcamp Delhi 5. With the fears of an imminent recession sinking in, aided ably by the Sequoia presentation, hushed tones proclaiming doom was everywhere and this had even resulted in a session on the slowdown that was to have lasted for 30 minutes being extended to three times that duration. The generic naivety of the community aside (the downturn is only another cycle in a business environment. Prosperity, as a guarantee cannot ever determine the willingness to start or sustain a venture. If that is your perspective, then you have to rethink why would you want to be an entrepreneur), what I realized was that the prevailing environment also now comprehensively marks the crossing of the line where we have blown a tremendous opportunity to make a difference.

In the past two years, I've tired of telling leaders across a broad range of businesses, especially in the digital sphere, that we are, historically, in a very special purple patch. We have reasonably low costs, plenty of resources available to super-innovate and make major punts for the future and the talent to build it, in a market that is oozing with potential. They key determining factor in all that was to step aside, think different from what we are accustomed to and innovate with a local audience and reality in mind than to mindlessly copy-paste what has been done to death in the West.

But, we did not. And we blew it.

What we are left with now are a few successful matrimony and job sites, one or two successful travel sites, a few wannabe horizontals, couple of also-ran social networking sites and some news and media properties. The troubles in the mobile space is worth another post in itself. Really, that is pretty much the sum total of they recent prosperity that we have to show all the recent prosperity and bullishness. We had an opportunity to innovate and change the game, instead the choice that was made was to get inspired, pray and hope somewhere the magic would kick in.

In a lot of ways the real opportunity cost that we have paid for this lack of imagination will probably be never known. Given the right degree of encouragement and the right perspective, what could have been possible is anyone's guess. We should really have been looking at localized content, products that are branded national but segmented local and also pushed to build products that would make sense for the Indian digital medium. For that matter, even unlocking the potential in the market vis-a-vis the sheer number of people out there is a worthwhile endeavor to get into. Did we? We did not.

That said, there is an upside to the story -- that a lot of people who just jump in the entrepreneurial pool because it is either cool or the new done thing will refrain from doing just that. Ideally, it should enable and empower a lot of talented individuals who have prospered in the good times, but have nothing incremental to gain in terms of increments and promotions for another year or so. Provided these people are reasonably risk non-averse and are looking to do something different, there is a tremendous width of opportunity available out there.

The world in a downturn is ripe with opportunities in terms of innovation and disruption. The question is if the leadership in the space will step up to the plate and act accordingly? Your guess is as good as mine on that.