India has been widely known as an emerging powerhouse in Asia, or even in the world. They are known for their improvised style of management that focuses on being fast and cheap, which are attributes just right for these tough times. To sum both up, that is what you call innovation.
Once, during one November afternoon, several executives in the United States gathered up together from among different industries ranging from banks and tech companies. They were discussing on how to set up operations in such a way they could develop products cheaply and quickly. In essence, they were discussing on how to borrow strategies from India, where speaker Navi Radjou of the Centre for India and Global Business at England’s Cambridge University led the meeting.
The meeting sums up to only one word: jugaad, which translates to that improvised style of innovation. Scarce resources drive it and attention to customer’s immediate needs, not what they want is another aspect that needs to be considered. To some, this might look like a fad, as many interpreted it as “cutting corners”, “disregarding safety” and it even “involves corruption.”
But the truth of the matter is juggad seems to be more realistic by saying that is needed to deliver one company’s objectives. They have to pursue jugaad with regulations and ethics in mind after all. As a matter of fact, companies such as Best Buy, Cisco Systems and Oracle are already employing the strategy. They have created products and services that are more economical both for supplier and consumer.
Radjou noted, “In today’s challenging times, American companies are forced to learn to operate with Plan Bs. But Indian engineers have long known how to invent with a whole alphabet soup of options that work, are cheap, and can be rolled out instantly. That is jugaad.”
One of its wonderful applications can be seen in Tata Motors. It has created the much-hyped Nano, a bare bones subcompact car that the Indian company sells for only $2,500 dollars to bottom-at-the- pyramid consumers. This type of market segments is out in each company’s pricing program, and targeting them would definitely be a sure hit.
To sum it all in the future, or in fact today, jugaad will soon become a strategy, not a fad.