Jugaad innovation is one reason why India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
- Jaideep Prabhu
Indian languages have no word for innovation. But India has
jugaad. It means finding practical solutions, being enterprising with resources, and learning from the principles of flexibility and frugality. Jugaad is bigger than a word.
It’s a mind-set.
To explain, Professor Jaideep Prabhu, co-author of Frugal Innovation: How to do Better with Less published in 2015, points to a small clay box in the corner of his office. “It’s an ingenious invention! It consumes no electricity, is 100% biodegradable and produces zero waste.”
The MittiCool fridge is the brainchild
of Mansukh Prajapati, a potter by trade. Water in an upper chamber of the clay box seeps through the walls of a lower chamber, cooling it through evaporation. In a country where 500 million people live without reliable electricity, Prajapati realised that his clay fridge could provide huge health benefits by keeping food cool without the need for electricity and at an affordable price; he trained a local workforce and started mass production. Forbes magazine has since named him among the most influential rural Indian entrepreneurs.
“Emerging markets like India, China, Brazil and Kenya are a breeding ground for ideas like the MittiCool that transform scarcity into opportunity and do more with less,” explains Prabhu, the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business at Cambridge Judge Business School.
“Jugaad innovation is one reason why, despite a scarcity of food, water and energy, and limited healthcare and education, India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world.”
And now, in a world that is increasingly described as ‘VUCA’ – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous – the ‘winds of frugal innovation are blowing west’, as some of the world’s top companies are embracing business models that look for simple solutions and then deliver them quickly and at less cost.
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Image:Detail from the cover of Jugaad Innovation by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja
Credit: Penguin Random House
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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