jugaad innovation & disruption model

EXTREME CONDITIONS DEMAND EXTREME RESPONSES OR THINK FRUGAL, BE FRIENDLY, GENERATE DISRUPTIVE GROWTH.

“JUGAAD INNOVATION” describes a process of bottom-up innovation and is able to create efficient solutions at low costs.
“Jugaad” is not only a factor influencing management, but also a real “cultural revolution” that challenges the production models of the West. A challenge with flashes of creativity and ingenuity.
Pushing employees at every level to free their creativity and invent frugal and sustainable ways to add significant value for stakeholders using far less natural resources while saving significant amounts of capital.
“Jugaad Innovation” is a real “survival manual” for changing times.

“Jugaad is a Hindi word that indicates an idea used to solve a problem quickly. It is often a shortcut, a reasoned expedient to get round an obstacle. However, it could be translated as “an associative solution of creativity and ingenuity“.

The lesson we can learn from this jugaad innovation process is to avoid intellectual laziness, which makes us incapable of generating change, and therefore social and individual improvement.

A concept that starts from a reflection: is it possible to transform crisis into the best opportunity for growth? And if so, how? The goal is to encourage companies to “embrace the concept of frugality (but not to be frugal) or to understand that it does not need to pour all its resources into research and development departments to achieve the same results that it could reach in another way, which is what happens now.”

OURS IS NOT A REPLACEMENT METHODOLOGY, BUT COMPLEMENTARY, WHICH MANY MULTINATIONALS ARE ADOPTING (FOR EXAMPLE CHIESI PHARMACEUTICALS, DOMPÉ PHARMACEUTICALS, SKY ITALIA, FERRERO INTERNATIONAL AND OTHERS).

To be able to “see the world with new and different eyes“. To innovate in a simple way you need to leave your comfort zone (which is just a comfortable trap) and change your usual point of view.

PRINCIPLE NUMBER ONE: CHOOSE OPPORTUNITY IN ADVERSITY

Dr. Thomas Müller a psychologist and crisis management specialist, observes that in cases of crisis, some people simply try to return to the previous situation. In this way, they make compromises for a guarantee of security. Instead, others resist this pressure and ask, “What is the opportunity that I can exploit if I take a step forward?“

Jugaad entrepreneurs belong to this second category. When they have to face difficulties, they do not avoid then, but accept them and learn from experience. In this way, they are able to create a better world not only for themselves, but also for their communities. It is necessary to “transform the half-empty glass into a half-full one”.

Jugaad innovators are able to find opportunities in adversity in three ways: transforming difficulties into opportunities for growth; ensuring that constraints work for them; and constantly adapting to an environment in continuous change due to their ability to improvise appropriate solutions for the challenges they meet along the way.

All these challenges are generating constraints in the environment in which companies operate. These constraints could paralyze leaders and stop their decision-making processes or could stimulate them to innovate for growth.
Faced with tough challenges, companies tend to adopt only one of four possible attitudes. They do not notice difficulties or they simply ignore them, they try to fight against them head on, they face them referring to old structures or they think too small to be able to respond to them.
However, these reactions are counterproductive in today’s world.

The reasons are: not considering or ignoring adversity until it is too late; facing difficulties head on instead of influencing them; facing new problems with old points of reference; thinking small when having to face great challenges.

Leaders can learn how to turn adversities into opportunities and benefit from innovators. Demonstrating resilience in the face of adversities and turning them into advantages is a skill that business leaders must urgently develop today. Transforming adversities into opportunities is not impossible.

The key to success is to adopt a positive mental outlook, which Justin Menkes calls “optimistic realism“, i.e. the capacity to clearly recognize risks that threaten the survival of the company and yet remain confident of being able to prevail.

In other words, at the sight of the first dark cloud, successful leaders do not “open their umbrella” but try to identify the positive aspect that the cloud can have.

Companies and their leaders can profit from opportunities in adversity following different paths:

  • recognizing that the glass is always half full;
  • realizing that extreme conditions are fertile ground for extreme innovations;
  • building psychological capital to develop resilience;
  • facing great challenges with an attitude of development;
  • exploiting the power of the network to face the threats of the market.

PRINCIPLE TWO:
DO MORE WITH LESS
PRINCIPLE THREE:
THINK AND ACT FLEXIBLY
PRINCIPLE FOUR:
PRESERVE SIMPLICITY
PRINCIPLE FIVE:
INCLUDE THE MARGIN
PRINCIPLE SIX:
FOLLOW YOUR HEART

Jugaad innovators like Kishore Biyani and Jeff Bezos are sincerely spontaneous in many ways: they have had the courage and the desire to take risks, they have trusted their intuition and have been passionate about what they do, convinced that they are working for a bigger cause.
Follow your heart (the seat of empathy, intuition and passion) is the last of the six principles that jugaad innovators follow. We must also understand what changes are needed at the organization level as well as at the individual level.
Global perception and expectations about innovation are changing and the business world would be shortsighted if it did not decide to change itself. This means looking at innovation both in scientific and in “real world” laboratories.
Our process has evolved to include the collaboration of the masses or masses-up, and from pure profit we have come to the choice of earning for a purpose.
Companies that adopt this new model of innovation today will surely have more chance to grow tomorrow in a more concrete and stable way. Obviously, the foundation must be persistence and determination.
The true value of a company is no longer its tangible resources or technological processes: everything resides in human capital and the underlying psychological capital, none of which can be imitated.
Anyone can buy technology or earn money in the financial market.