Jugaad

Depending on who you ask Jugaad is a word that might be Hindi, Punjabi or Urdu and means variously "a clever or ingenious expedient" or “quick fix”. We might describe it as a “hack”.

Either way, in the world of innovation, it has become a lingua franca to describe a method and approach to developing novel, often improvised and temporary solutions to a problem or need.

But the use of the word jugaad in specific circumstances emphasises that there is something distinctive in this approach that can be aligned with an Indian experience of exploring this type of solution. Often this is because it is an approach employed by those at the margins of society where resource pressures mean that this type of thinking is the only viable approach. It is not for nothing that this approach is sometimes referred to as “frugal” innovation as well.

There are many innovation models and techniques but Jugaad is sufficiently distinct to warrant its individual recognition and its methods and approaches are increasingly studied in the business literature of the west.

Professor Jaideep Prabhu is a professor at Cambridge University's Judge Business School in the UK and author of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth. A leading thinker on what makes this approach distinctive and increasingly popular in the innovation practices of Western firms, he sees it as different and novel and different from lean or agile based innovation models which he sees as internally or supply-side focused; they pursue cost efficiencies or responsiveness as an end goal. "Jugaad, in contrast, is primarily externally or demand-side focused. It uses cost efficiency as a means to achieve a larger goal of delivering higher value to customers," he says. "Jugaad innovators strive to create products and services that score high on three attributes increasingly valued by customers: Affordability, quality, and sustainability."

Some extraordinary products and services have emerged from jugaad thinking. For example, SELCO, a sustainable energy provider that sells solar panels to a network of small entrepreneurs who, in turn, use them to charge battery-powered lights rented to households outside the country's electricity grid. The Mitticool clay refrigerator, invented in 2009 uses the cooling effect of evaporation to create an effective off grid refrigerator. Other examples include, amazingly enough, frugal defibrillators!

When I describe these as emerging from “jugaad thinking”, I did so intentionally as scholars of the approach see it as being founded in a mindset, a way of thinking and not a mechanistic framework. As Wido Menhardt, CEO of the Philips Innovation Center in Bangalore says, "Jugaad is a culture, an attitude, an outcome of circumstance, but definitely not something planned. The challenge is to tap into it and channel it."

So why is this important? Exposing ourselves to that mindset and incorporating it into our approaches to resolving wicked problems, we increase the likelihood of identifying those novel solutions we so desperately need.

Here is your chance to experience a bit of that culture, attitude and circumstance. Here is the origin of your novel thinking.

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