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Tuesday 28 April 2015

A BOOK REVIEW: Jugaad: Innovation Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth

Jugaad: Innovation Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth 

Authors: Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja 
 Noida 2014
ISBN: 9788184002058

Navi Radjou is an independent innovation and leadership consultant and speaker based in Palo Alto, California. He is also a fellow at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Jaideep Prabhu is the Jawaharlal Nehru professor of Indian business and enterprise and director of the Centre for India & Global Business at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Simone Ahuja is the founder of Blood Orange, a marketing and strategy consultancy with content production capabilities headquartered in Minneapolis and Mumbai.

This book is a collection of striking Jugaad scheme of people all around the world. It describes how people have built enormous companies by simple innovations. Jugaad Entrepreneurs have converted their problems into opportunities. Book is a simple reading and collection of many stories right from International Brands like: 3M, Facebook, Apple to home grown companies like: Big Bazaar, Yes Bank, SBI and many more.

Six key principles of Jugaad

Seek opportunity in adversity: Jugaad entrepreneurs perceive harsh constraints as an invitation to innovate. Modern times we need to transform adversity into an opportunity to bring value to themselves and their communities. For instance, Kanak Das, who lives in a remote village in northeast India, grew tired of riding his bicycle on roads full of potholes and bumps. Rather than complain, he turned this constraint to his advantage by retrofitting his bicycle with a makeshift device that converts the shocks it receives into acceleration energy allowing his bicycle to run faster on bumpy roads.
Do more with less: Jugaad innovators are highly practical in the time of scarcity. The practitioners of Jugaad work with what they’ve got. Doing more with less is in striking contrast to the ‘‘bigger is better.’’ In Chapter Three we find two jugaad entrepreneurs, Gustavo Grobocopatel of Los Grobo (Argentina) and Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel (India). They have developed frugal business models to cost-effectively deliver agricultural and telecom services, respectively, to the masses.
Think and act flexibly: Jugaad entrepreneurs’ flexible mindset constantly questions the status quo, keeps all options open, and transforms existing products, services, and business models. Unconstrained by structured processes, Jugaad innovators can quickly respond to unexpected changes in their environment. Jugaad innovators don’t just think outside the box: they create whole new boxes. In chapter four we find Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, who foresaw a big market for extremely affordable cars and went on to successfully launch the $2,000 Nano in 2009.
Keep it simple: Jugaad isn’t about seeking sophistication or flawlessness by over engineering products, but rather about developing a ‘‘good enough’’ solution that gets the job done. For instance, the open-source software company Ushahidi has developed an elegantly simple solution—the Ushahidi Platform—that relies on mobile SMS (text messaging) to coordinate bottom-up responses to cataclysmic events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, or epidemic outbreaks. The Ushahidi Platform was pioneered in Africa and is now being widely deployed worldwide—including in the US—as a simple yet highly effective crisis management tool. In Chapter Five you will discover how large Western companies such as GM, Philips, and Siemens, as well as a next-generation companies such as Google and Facebook, are using simplicity to ensure that their solutions are accessible and easy-to-use by a large number of users.
Include the margin:  Western firms typically struggle to serve mainstream customers; in contrast, Jugaad entrepreneurs intentionally seek growth Strategy for marginal, underserved customers and pull them into the mainstream. Such entrepreneurs conjure up radically affordable solutions to meet the needs of these underserved markets. Their inclusive business models engage low-income and nontraditional communities. For instance, Dr. Liu Jiren, Chairman and CEO of Neusoft, China’s largest IT solution and service provider, is concerned about the health of eight hundred million Chinese living in rural areas. Dr. Liu’s genuine concern for China’s marginal segments led him to develop inclusive technology solutions, such as telemedicine applications that deliver affordable health care to millions of rural Chinese. Marginal segments that increasingly include middle-class consumers in the United States are purchasing power is being squeezed by the lack of growth in their income over the last decade.
Follow your heart: Jugaadoos do not rely on focus groups or formal market research to decide what products to make nor do they worry how investors will react to their new product strategies. They know their customers and their products intimately and ultimately, they trust and follow their hearts. Specifically, Jugaad entrepreneurs employ intuition, empathy, and passion and other qualities that are increasingly just as important as analytical thinking in navigating a global environment that is ever more diverse, interconnected, and unpredictable. For instance, Kishore Biyani, who is the founder of Big Bazaar, one of India’s largest and most successful retailers, he did not use management consultants to validate his idea of launching retail stores that look, feel, and even smell like chaotic street bazaars.
In this book, authors argue that Jugaad is an important tool that Western companies can add to their existing innovation toolkit. We explore each of the underlying principles of Jugaad and show how they can fortify a structured approach to innovation and achieve growth by adding frugality and agility.
In short, authors provide a wealth of examples of entrepreneurs who have found success by doing more with less’ "Jugaad Innovation”. Jugaad Innovation argues that the West must look to places like India, China, and Africa for a new, bottom–up approach to frugal and flexible innovation. 
I recommend this read to all business people, who are interested in frugal innovation.


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