Indian Innovation

Attended the technical architects's conference in my organization last week on 30th March.

Want to talk here about the inaugural talk about India's next global export - Jugaad. It was by Prof. Prasad Kaipi, who is heading executive director of Center of Leadership, innovation and Change at ISB, hyderabad.

He talked about 'Jugaad - an Indian model of Innovation', where necessity and resource / time crunch has given rise to innovative solutions to existing problems. It was nice to hear the examples that he cited about solutions of using tractor as a vehicle, and washing machines as lassi-makers, and firing pins for russian tanks and so on. There have been criticism like Jugaad being only a stop-gap or work-around solution, so how do we take this globally around the world.

He talked a lot about making the Jugaad solutions in India meet the global standards.

He focused on 6 attributes to pay attention to making the Jugaad solutions acceptable world-wide:

• Scalable
• High Quality
• Sustainable
• Inclusive - Open innovation -Wisdom of crowd rather than self-declared experts developing solutions. Use diversity of perspectives, Not letting the IQ affect the EQ.
• Strategic
• Affordable

His idea proposed was if we pay attention to these points for whatever Jugaad solution we employ at our homes / work places, it would definitely be meeting global standards of innovative solutions.


His talk also contained some agile principles of being effective rather than efficient, and others like failing small and learning and so on.

It was really heartening to hear these principles that we believe in from an expert. Also discussions around the Indian Innovation were thought provoking. Definitely plan to think about it further, and spread the word.

For more information on Jugaad, have a look at this article in Business Week.
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2009/id2009121_864965.htm