Jugaad Innovation - Jugaad King

Breaking down internal silos is critical when you are trying to quickly bring to market brilliant ideas from external sources. Few companies who have understood the importance are given below with their stories: Facebook Facebook knows this, although its subscriber base has grown to more than 80 crore users, the company still employs only about 35 designers, using a flat organizational structure. Soleio Cuervo, the second designer that Facebook CEO Mark Zucherberg hired in 2005, says “When I started, it was only a handful of product designers. Now, engineers work with us directly. We don’t throw documents at them with specs. We all focus on the site’s user experience versus the code. SAP Labs Similarly V.R. Ferose, Managing Director of SAP Labs India has set up ‘AppHaus’. An open space within the campus where designers, engineers and marketers work collaboratively & intensively on new products. Recently a small 10 member team worked around the clock in the AppHaus using limit...

Jugaad Innovators do not reinvent, they improvise. There are some simple methods that can be implemented to enhance improvement at regular stages. Improving on regular basis will ensure that the need never arises of reinventing. Some of these methods are given below and explained briefly. Break Rules and Shift Values When Necessary In July 2003, IBM’s then CEO Sam Palmisano organized a ‘Value Jam’. A three day long online brainstorming session in which all employees were invited to renew and update IBM’s century-old value system. This collaborative exercise re-contextualized the very notion of innovation and IBM’s core values. Such activities ensure that there is always innovation happening within the company, not just product ideas but cultural and working environment wise too. Don’t Let Inflexible Investors and Customers Dictate Your Innovation Agenda Henry Ford, founder of Ford motors said “If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster hors...

Founded in 1902, 3M has come to epitomize American ingenuity. Over the course of a century, its prolific inventors have churned out breakthrough products that have become part of Americana. From Scotch Tape to Scotchguard Protector and Thinsulate Insulation to the omnipresent Post-it Notes. What made 3M so innovative is the reason being, 3M set itself a goal of generating 30% of its total revenues from new products it had introduced in the preceding five years. This bold goal is known as the New Product Vitality Index (NPVI) within 3M. This helps the company to constantly invent and reinvent products.  The 3M culture helps create and cultivate new ideas. To be one of the most innovative companies in the world it has launched one of the most radical initiatives – the 15% program for its staff. This program allows 3M employees to use 15% of their paid work time to pursue their dream projects. 3M is also very supportive towards its employees with their projects. Some o...

Few years ago if you told a typewriter making company that, soon the computers will be taking over the world and typewriters will be useless. The company would have considered shutting itself. But the company that once made typewrites is still making International Business machines. The company was rightly named International Business Machines (IBM), earlier it made typewriters; now it makes computers and corporate communication solutions. According to Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University, most leaders operate with one of two mindsets, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Leaders with fixed mindset often tent to use the tried and tested ways to overcome challenges. They believe that their qualities are carved in stone and they prefer to stick to the rules. In contrast, leaders with growth mindset believe that their basic qualities can be nurtured and improved through efforts. Jugaad innovators are endowed with a growth mindset. IBM is one such company tha...

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 seek for adverse conditions to unleash their Jugaad skills. The more extreme condition calls for more extreme innovations. Corporate leaders should view extreme conditions such as massive technology shifts, change in regulations, or competitive threats that come out of blue as an opportunity to develop radical innovations that disrupt industries and shape whole new markets. Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO of salesforce.com, is one such innovator. In the year 1999, he founded salesforce.com in his San Francisco apartment with bold vision. He wanted to make business software which enterprises use to manage their customer interactions affordable and accessible to more companies. The business model was pay as you go and it could be accessed by the browser itself. The software was not installed in the employees’ PCs thus avoiding the expensive license fees and maintenance costs charged by large software vendors like Oracle, Siebel and SAP. In 2001, when salesforce.c...

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...