Corporate social responsibility typically means that companies spend 2% of their profits supporting NGOs in health, education, rural development, and similar causes. R A Mashelkar, former head of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, takes a different approach. In his recent K R Narayan Oration at Australian National University, he called for a new form of CSR focusing on innovation to serve the masses through what he called an ASSURED strategy. ASSURED is Mashelkar’s acronym for Afford.