Jugaad Innovation - Jugaad King

Is it a car? Is it an auto rickshaw? No its a Jugaad Rickshaw.

Evolution is a constant process. Ages ago business was done purely on the basis of availability; the customer did not get choice of brand or alternative products. Then came the industrial way of doing business, mass production and standardization became the key element of any business. Then the marketing concepts were running the business, big brands were made, markets were researched and products customized. Now welcome to the age of Frugality. It is getting critical to survive in the age of scarcity and the warning signs are all around. It’s worth examining the specific factors that are creating a new era of austerity in many parts of the world. Some of the major factors are: Increasing numbers of frugal customers The recession has made Western middle-class consumers far more cost-conscious than they were in the boom years. In India 70 crore people earn Rs. 100 or less in a day. They may be low earners but they want to gain access to the same products and services enjoyed by th...

TCS is one of the first Indian companies to embrace the structured R&D innovation model. In 1981, TCS inaugurated the Tata Research Design and Development Centre (TRDDC). It was India’s first dedicated R&D centre. Over the time TCS realized that the structured R&D innovation model has limitations and found it hard to keep the domestic as well as the international clients happy at all times. They no longer wanted TCS to just deliver cost effective IT services, but also wanted TCS to provide low-cost IT services with innovations.   To take on this challenge, CEO N. Chandrasekaran, explored ways to improvise innovation by harnessing the Jugaad ingenuity of TCS’s nearly 240,000 employees. Especially the collaboration minded Gen X and Gen Y employees which also account for TCS’s majority workforce. TCS invested heavily in social networks to bring together all the employees. As R&D CTO, Ananth Krishnan explains: ‘We are today probably one of the largest...

Corporate leaders cannot build a resilient organization without a resilient workforce. Fred Luthans, professor of Organizational Behavior at University of Nebraska says “The true value of a company is no longer the tangible assets or even its technological processes. It lies in the human capital and underlying psychological capital. Anyone can buy your technology or obtain money from financial markets, but cannot buy employee motivation, engagement, confidence, resiliency, hope and optimism. Franck Riboud is one such leader who wants to boost his firm’s psychological capital. Riboud is the CEO of Danone, a French multinational that is one of the world’s largest suppliers of dairy products and bottled waters. In India, Danone is known in the North markets for its yogurt and lassi products. Danone is the company to launch Yakult the probiotic drink in India. Riboud believes that his 92 year old company is facing 2 major challenges, 1. Consumers around the world are looking for afford...

Jugaad Innovators can be seen at all levels of economy. Right from an ordinary potter who made a refrigerator that runs without electricity to the Chairman of the country’s biggest bank . Jugaad Innovations occur when there are adversities and constrains. This ideally gives us an understanding that the larger firms will never require to implement Jugaad and it is limited to only small and mid size firms. We have seen some of the biggest firms getting into trouble and declaring themselves bankrupts. We have seen the Indian Airline major Kingfisher facing financial crisis, once a major cell phone manufacturer RIM has put their flagship Blackberry Phones division up for sale. These are some of the examples that even the giant can fall. It is instructive, therefore to look at the major sources of adversity that large companies face:   A worsening global economy: The US and the European economies have already seen a steep decline in the economic growth. According to The...