Discuss Jugaad Innovation with co-author and host Navi Radjou on Social Edge

Hosted by Navi Radjou (May 2012)

R&D engineers at Whirlpool and Samsung are busily developing next-generation appliances—like a high-tech fridge that can text you if you run out of milk. These engineers ask themselves: “What if a fridge can directly communicate with your cellphone?”

Far away, in the middle of a desert in Northwestern India, a social entrepreneur named Mansukh Prajapati asked himself: “What if a fridge can consume no electricity?” This was a big what if question given that over 500 million Indians live without electricity.

Prajapati answered his own question by developing MittiCool (mitti means ‘‘earth’’ in Hindi)—a $50 fridge made of clay that is 100% biodegradable and uses no electricity. Water from an upper chamber in MittiCool seeps through the side walls, cooling the lower food chamber through evaporation.

Prajapati doesn’t have a PhD or MBA (in fact, he didn’t finish high school) and yet he created a frugal and sustainable way to help villagers keep milk and vegetables fresh for days using only clay and water.

In our book Jugaad Innovation: Be Frugal, Think Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth we argue that Western corporations must emulate social entrepreneurs in emerging markets like Prajapati if they are to innovate faster, better, and cheaper. Eschewing big R&D budgets and rigid processes like Six Sigma, Western firms need to embrace the frugal and flexible jugaad mindset of social entrepreneurs to sustainably meet the needs of cost-conscious, eco-aware Western consumers.

Jugaad is a Hindi word meaning an innovative fix; an improvised solution born from ingenuity and cleverness. It is also known as zizhu chuangxin in China, gambiarra in Brazil, D-I-Y in the USA, jua kali in Kenya, and système D in France. Jugaad innovators like Prajapati dare question conventional wisdom by raising bold what if questions.

We believe that Western CEOs can cultivate the agile jugaad mindset in their rigid organizations by partnering with social entrepreneurs. For instance, GE Healthcare partnered with Embrace—which makes portable infant warmers that cost less than 1% of conventional incubators—to save the lives of premature babies in rural India.

Embrace was cofounded by Jane Chen, Linus Liang, Naganand Murty, and Rahul Panicker who asked: “What if we can keep a premature baby warm without separating it from its mother?” The answer was a simple yet effective jugaad solution—a low-cost, portable infant warmer whose design dovetails with ‘‘kangaroo care,’’ whereby a mother holds her baby against her skin.

We are eager to learn how you may have used the frugal and flexible jugaad approach to come up with breakthrough solutions to “big, hairy” problems. We would also like to discuss:

• What big what if questions do we need to ask ourselves in the US to reduce healthcare costs and financially include the 60 million under-banked/unbanked Americans?
• How can big Western firms effectively partner with jugaad-minded social entrepreneurs to co-create frugal solutions that deliver more value at less cost?

Be creative. Think zizhu chuangxin, gambiarra, D-I-Y, jua kali or système D and join Navi Radjou, co-author of Jugaad Innovation, in the conversation.