Innovation 101 – The Jugaad phenomenon May 11, 2010
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Culture, Design Thinking, Industrial Design, Industrial Design, Innovation, Innovation 101, Jugaad, Management, predictions 2010, Thought leadership.Tags: Brand India, Business Week, Car ke side effects, cheap, Corporate social responsibility, Culture of India, Ethical issues, frugal innovation, India, Innovation 101, Innovation and Idea Management, Jugaad, Jugaad innovation, Kachra Innovation, Keith Sawyer, Nano, Next Practices, Tata, wisdom
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This post is meant for those of you who have set up automated alerts for the new magic word ‘Jugaad’, the most fashionable innovation thread about India these days. Several innovation ‘gurus’, management experts, authors have latched on. The common thread – they’re mostly based in the US and are of Indian origin. The more equal of us. Keith Sawyer calls it a ‘fad from India’ and that’s exactly what it is.
Business Week* reports on a management fad from India, that goes by a Hindi slang word, jugaad (say joo-gaardh). It means “an improvisational style of innovation”. It’s “inexpensive invention on the fly”. It sometimes has negative connotations, like cutting corners. The idea is that it doesn’t have to be perfect or fancy; it’s just good enough to satisfy immediate needs.
>>*See the comments at the end of the article.
Don’t be fooled – Jugaad is jugaad and innovation is innovation. Jugaad is a dangerous mindset – you heard right, a mindset. You ‘fix’ things by simply putting together bits and pieces, never mind that they don’t fit or that the final product is unreliable, unsafe, whatever. When something goes wrong, you can always use the excuse of not having time, resources, skills, etc. After all you did achieve ‘cheap’, didn’t you.
Maruti Gypsy 2020?
7 years on and still a startup February 13, 2009
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Companies of the future, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Heart Capital©, Thought leadership.Tags: Business model, Culture, Culture of India, customer focus, Entrepreneurship, Ideafarms, Innovation, Next Practices, startup culture, Thought leadership, trust
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This post is based on a true story. The story of Ideafarms. We started among equally uncertain settings in the wake of the dotcom bust and 9/11. We had no funds. We had no product ideas. We didn’t know who we would sell to. All we had was passion and deep down conviction that we would make things work for us. Today we’re almost 7 years old and alive and kicking. Ready to take on the current gloom with renewed energy. We’re back to our start-up ways.
The most important thing then was - and I say this with the benefit of hindsight – that we had no past to weigh us down; nothing of a reputation either individually or collectively that needed to be protected. Both of which we have today. So we’ve decided to shrug the baggage off our shoulders. (more…)
Raju, How could you? January 13, 2009
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Corporate terrorism, Corruption, Illusions, Innovation.Tags: Brand India, Business, Culture of India, demise of capitalism, fraud, India, Indian Government, Marketeering, Ramalinga Raju, Satyam Computer Services, Western Thought
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Satyamev Jayate (Sanskrit: “Truth Alone Triumphs”) is purportedly the foundation stone of India’s value systems. The Indian newspapers have been indulging in wordplay about how Satyam means not ‘truth’ but lies. Like every other scam, this too shall die out of public memory and that’s no surprise. What is surprising is that while we keep touting the need for innovation, we’ll do exactly the opposite in Satyam’s case and in every such future occurence.
First let’s look at some ‘facts’.
1. We are expected to believe (media plays Government spokesperson here) that one man is responsible for the Satyam scam and that he kept at it for 7 years without being found out. Yeah! We believe you!
2. The Indian business environment (read regulatory frameworks) encourages entrepreneurship and officials are above board. Corruption is the fault of the citizen and not the government. Yeah! We’re wet behind our ears.
3. The 53,000 employees of one of India’s IT powerhouses does not have even 3 employees that can be elevated to the Board and we need the Government to appoint some ‘untainted’ officers. Yeah! See what happened to Colin Powell?
4. If the Indian Government does not follow the leader (read US Government) by bailing out the company, employees will be on the streets. Yeah! Sure, the company was paying its salaries on receipt of monthly payments from their customers.
5. Statutory auditors are supposed to sign on Company results based on the Chairman’s statement and are not meant to independently verify the accounts. Yeah! Capitalistic businesses will protect the interests of the guys who pays most and therefore they would defintely find private players more attractive to side with.
The truth could be that there are several ‘powerful’ vested interests locked into the company. How many hand-in-glovers are involved in the scam is something I think will unfurl in the weeks/months ahead.
Rising from the ashes of Global capitalism … January 5, 2009
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Culture, General, Innovation, Thought leadership, Wisdom of the leaders.Tags: Business and Economy, Culture of India, global meltdown, India, Society and Culture, Thought leadership, Vir Sanghvi, Western Thought, wisdom
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Image by ~FreeBirD®~ via Flickr
Quoting from Vir Sanghvi in The Dream Lives, [January 3, 2009], India will have to make a huge effort in resurrecting its dream. This time around we’ll have to dream while staying wide awake.
Already, the collapse of the Wall Street model of global capitalism has shown us that, ultimately, the only country that India can trust is India itself. And the only solutions that work are our own, derived from our ingenuity.
… But I don’t think the dream is dead. We are still ahead of the rest and still on course for the Indian century.
What is dead, however, is the complacency and shallow superficiality of much of the middle class. We followed the wrong gods and were swayed by the wrong mantras.
Now, we are back on track — as Indians, together.
So what does all this mean to the average Indian? First of all there is no such commodity. Perhaps, in the business world, the demography we’re talking about would be the urban middle class. Which is also a heterogeneous lot. The elite educated. The elite uneducated. The educated haves. The educated have nots. The ambitious employee. The reckless entrepreneur. The tradition-shackled husband. The emancipated wife. Most lured by western materialism.
Out of this maze of complexity comes a potluck of priorities. All driven by aspirations propagated by glitzy magazines. 2008 shattered the mirrors and the smoke vanished. We are now faced with our old realities. A return to family values, ethical practices and hard work. Old fashioned but tested. Need before greed.
Any takers?
Innovation 101: The business of Culture December 30, 2008
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Culture, Globalisation, Innovation, Innovation 101.Tags: Brand India, Culture, Culture of India, Gandhi, India, Innovation 101, Next Practices
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This post is a modified version of an article I wrote. Some patriotic leanings are evident …
“A culture is an organization’s collective mind-set – its beliefs, intentions, and memories”, said Mark Youngblood in his 1997 book, Life at the Edge of Chaos: Creating the Quantum Organization. “Organizations that will survive and prosper in the twenty-first century will be fast, flexible, responsive, resilient, creative, balanced, and full of vitality.” He calls them [these companies] Quantum Organizations. “Quantum Organizations, in direct contrast with the machine-like design of industrial era companies, operate using the principles of living systems. They are organic webs of life: dynamic, interconnected networks of relationships that are constantly learning, adapting, and evolving.”
Quantum or not, an organizational model based on his prophetic understanding of the new millennium business world is urgently needed today. A key ingredient for building the firm of the future is the setting up of a culture that can evolve, sustain and grow. Relationships, learning, adapting, evolving – simple to use words – not so simple to understand or, for that matter, apply in a particular context. For one, the mechanistic worldview [what became the order in the Industrial era] suggests the need for rigid structures. Today’s realities are quite different. Relationships are being formed without any physical contact: very deep relationships are being founded on areas of common interest.
In my opinion, the Internet has promoted globalisation as a natural way of doing business in today’s world. It has also made “individualised” infrastructure ubiquitously available. Which means that ways of working have changed from mono to network. As a natural outcome, all monolithic organisations are morphing into networked enterprises; all solo endeavours are seeking interdependence.
I wonder if this could point towards building a business culture, especially valuable from my point of view, for small entrepreneurial ventures. Building a culture consciously, methodically and based on a value system that reflects India’s ethos, history and diversity. I come from a generation that has taken pride in the American ‘twang’ and has been celebrating capitalism, without quite understanding that it won’t work in its yankee avatar in India. Do we understand our own contexts? It’s high time we did. (more…)
Sunil Malhotra
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