The poll was as follows:

As a designer in India what do you think is holding back you from doing great work in India? And the options to choose were:

1. Corruption
2. Lack of Awareness of Design
3. Lack of facilities for Design
4. Clients don’t have enough money
5. Not enough time for Design

The options for this poll got me thinking. I understand that in the Indian context where design is a fledgling discipline, slowly but surely spreading its wings these above mentioned reasons for not being able to do great design work seem plausible. Lack of awareness regarding design has always been an issue in India, also the absence of formal design departments, and corruption plays a big deterrent to doing good design. As a design consultancy trying to acquire design projects, awareness about design plays a key role, but what happens when you are part of a design team in a company? What kind of frustrations does the designer face then?

The deterrents to doing good design in Europe are different or maybe even the same. The lack of a culture of design in an organization, lack of presence of design in the board room, limited or absent design research, more emphasis given to market research are some of the frustrations of the designers in European organizations.

But in spite of these deterrents is there no way to do good design work? I think the way to go is for the designers to think more holistically.

The way I see it now, design is no longer a typical form of creative problem solving in today’s complex working environment.  The designer cannot just identify a problem, select appropriate goals and realize solutions. It involves designing the entire system of the product, the consumer experience and at times also the business model.

This brings me to the holistic design approach practiced by Yves Behaar, founder Fuse project. What Yves does is practice 360 degree design.  He understands how the role of design has changed over the years. From being focused on aesthetics and then process, design now can play a role in the entire value chain.

Looking at the example of the clever little bag project done for Puma by Fuse, the task at hand was to improve the sustainability of Puma’s already very successful shoe box. The resulting clever little bag did not just change the material of the box but looked at a packaging solution that was a result of “in-depth exploration of the company’s logistics, manufacturing, distribution, and customer interactions with the product”.

Designers must broaden their outlook and understand various aspects of the value chain, about the customer experience and understand the business they are working in. Design is now not only about aesthetics but has grown beyond that with time. The requirements from a designer have changed. Have the designers around the world accepted the challenge?

References:

www.poolmagazine.in

www.triplepundit.com/2011/11/yves-behars-7-principles-holistic-product-design

Is this successful or is it another arbitrary design award?

Design awards contribute to the reduction of design on visual and haptic perceptible levels while not considering process innovation, customer acceptance and economic success as key selection criteria. The selection criteria of the Design Management Award should define what excellence in design management is and thereby covering the complete spectrum of design management. Unfortunately, this definition is missing, in what way the entries are difficult to compare and the selection of the winner – by a jury which changes every year – becomes very arbitrary.

Design management is more than the successful project management of design. To successfully implement design management in the company and lead in a sustainable way, it is important to consider the following four topics.

• Strategy e.g. the orientation of the design strategy towards the company and / or brand strategy.
• Organization e.g. the setup of a design department, development of skills & competencies and the collaboration with external partners.
• Processes & Tools e.g. the implementation of an effective and efficient design process, embedded in the entire development process with clear roles and responsibilities.
• Culture e.g. the building of a multi-disciplinary culture that is open to creativity and user-centered innovation.

Such a framework was communicated by the design management award coordinator only in a research report; unfortunately, this structure is not transparently linked to the award. However the award setup would be a great topic to strengthen and integrate the design management community and to gain a common definition of excellence in design management.

Many companies that do a great job in design management have not noticed the design management award so far and the annual prolongation of the registration period shows that there is a lack of suitable candidates. Nevertheless, the award is important for the design management community and for companies that have recognized the importance of design. If companies are increasingly investing in design, competitive advantage will shift from good design to good design management. As design management consultants, we see a growing demand for design management skills in business. For this reason, we have built a design management training program, next to our consulting business: www.growdesignmanagement.com

Source: This text was first published in the design magazine PAGE in November 2011.

Innovation. The undisputed Holy Grail of business drivers for the past decade. Thanks to several run away successful companies with innovation at their core, the term is now rooted in almost every corporate mission. Those once on the outside waiting for the trend to stick are now quickly trying to figure out what it means. More importantly what it means for them. Unfortunately, with my experience consulting many companies, they often do not stop to think what innovation means for their customers.

Wikipedia defines Innovation as: the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that   are accepted by markets, governments, and society.

It is further noted that innovation differs beyond creation, in that innovation is the actual implementation of the creation.

Innovation is a trendy buzzword used often in corporate lingo and tossed around the boardroom and executive meetings, but is innovation truly what they should be focused on? Yes. And no.

In my previous post, I wrote about (in my opinion) the “runner up” management trend of the past decade, customer intimacy. So if a company wants to be innovative, they do indeed need to create better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas. However, to be quite frank, customers do not appreciate innovation in that sense. They appreciate awesomeness.

In this dated and controversial HBR post The Awesomeness Manifesto  it is argued that innovation itself needs innovation.  Furthermore the author claims that instead of innovating, create awesomeness.

Summarized in the article: Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That’s a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics.

I agree. My mom (and likely your customers) does not care about innovation. Innovation is not a word they use. Instead, they equate innovation with awesomeness. My mom will say awesome and that is enough to make her want that offer. Think about it. When you factor in the “human factor” how do people really relate to your company/offer? Or better yet, according to Jeff Bezos of Amazon “your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room”.

Me personally, I do not describe my beloved apple products to my friends as innovative. I do however say my iPad is awesome. Perhaps it is my California roots that make me embrace this word so enthusiastically. And while I can make no claims, I am quite sure those companies that are leading the pack in greatness are making sure their customers think they are awesome.

I’m not saying that the term awesomeness should replace innovation around the corporate boardroom. I know in some cultures the term may be interpreted as juvenile. I am saying that companies that focus on their consumers and making awesome products and/or experiences for them will end up being innovative.

You may agree with me or not, and that is the point. I would love to hear your driving factor for innovating into the 21^st century.

By the way … Umar’s post has generated such a great deal of attention (good &bad) that The Manifesto is now a collaborative, open-source project, to which anyone can contribute. Personally, I think that is awesome.

Personally, I haven’t been bothered really much with the topic and I entered the seminar quite skeptical. However, talking to some of the participants I realised that I have a quite idealistic view, and that in reality there are definitely people that keep encountering challenges that can be related back to gender specific issues. So it made me think. What is so different for me? Does it maybe have to do something with the field I am working in?

So here are two of my personal learnings:

• Women and men do speak a different language .
  Real rocket science, right? But indeed, there are cases where it is clear that the different genders listen with “a different ear”. Now you might think that women would listen more on the interpersonal level. But surprisingly enough, especially at the beginning of business meetings, women tend to focus on the goal only while men often have to settle the hierarchy first. Most women simply don’t get distracted with settling the positions, or in other words, don’t play the same game. Might be a real mistake when you come to think of it!
• Women are reluctant to get into a fight.
  In meetings where people are becoming emotional, many women would focus on the complaining, sad, talkative or disturbing person in order level them out and try to keep the good atmosphere. However, as a female CEO told me last week, business meetings are not about making friends. Some of the best people are really hard to work with! To get the best results, it is extremely important to share and actively discuss different opinions. Especially creative solutions need challenging!

But probably the most important thing I learnt was a confirmation that design, creativity and innovation need differences! And we just need to manage them well. Design requires a multitude of perspectives, disciplines, different cultures, different backgrounds and different genders!

So embrace these differences and listen with those different ears we have, just make sure you play the same game. And last but not least, don’t worry about making everyone happy, create those creative fights!

• Existing apps: The first part of the blog post provides an overview of existing apps. Some are free, and others cost a little, but all hit some kind of usefulness.
• App wish list: The second part of the blog post contains wish list that hopefully gets in the hand of some smart developers.

Read on and let me know what apps you’re using too and what’s on your wish list!

EXISTING TOP-APPS FOR DESIGN & INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

1. BrandZ 100 by Iconmobile

BrandZ is based on the world’s largest brand equity database and combines the knowledge and expertise of Millward Brown Optimor and the global marketing and communication insight and resource of WPP a world leader in marketing communications. BrandZ Top 100 ranking sees itself as the most reliable, comprehensive, and useful brand valuation ranking available and is a good addition to the other well-known brand equity rankings of Forbes and Interbrand.

2. Business Model Toolbox by Business Model Foundry

This app is based on the Business Model Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder, a widely practiced visual template pre-formatted with the nine blocks of a business model (customer segments, value propositions, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partners, cost structure). The Business Model Toolbox combines the speed of a napkin sketch with the smarts of a spreadsheet. It enables you to map, test, and iterate your business ideas – fast.

3. UI Sketcher by Box UK

The UI Sketcher is a sketching tool designed specifically for the iPad, which lets users easily create and share user interface design ideas. Incredible levels of detail and a suite of realistic drawing tools ensure a quality user experience and make the process of sketching intuitive and simple. It includes several sharing features including email, Dropbox and external display capability, for further discussion with your peers.

4. Moodboard by A Tiny Tribe llc.

The moodboard app is the bestselling app for creating mood and inspiration boards on your iPad. Each board is a blank canvas for organizing the things that inspire you. Add photos, text, color swatches, and special elements to your boards, then share them with colleagues, anywhere, anytime.

5. Design Brief 2 by norge apps

Design Brief is a specially targeted app that aids creative professionals put together a design brief document/agreement for a new design project. This is a nice idea, however it does not allow to communicate the complexity of most design challenges.

6. Mindo by Laterhorse

Mindo is a mind mapping tools for the iPad. It enables you to organize your thoughts, ideas and information whenever you want. Useful for structuring projects or presentation in the first round.

7. Evernote by Evernote

Evernote helps you remember anything and everything that happens. From notes to ideas to snapshots to recordings, everything it instantly synchronizes from your iPhone to your Mac or Windows desktop or vice versa. Great to document and archive your projects or to set up a design guideline, that is digitally available everywhere.

8. Mendeley – Reference Manager by Mendeley

Mendeley is academic software that indexes and organizes all of your PDF documents and research papers into your own personal digital library. It gathers document details from your PDF allowing you to effortlessly search, organize and cite. It also includes groups focusing on papers in specific design disciplines.

9. Lean Innovation Tools by Implement Consulting Group

Are you a part of innovation or development teams? Do you lead innovation teams or development organisations? The Lean Innovation tool book has served as inspiration and guideline for thousands of managers and knowledge workers in development organisations.

10. IDEO method cards by IDEO

The printed IDEO Method Card deck are well-known in the design community, they were first released in 2003. With more than ten thousand decks in distribution it is a great success in the marketplace. In order to make it more readily available to an ecosystem of users this tool evolved to a new level: the Method Card iPhone app.

11. Storyboards by Tamajii Inc

Creativity can’t wait! Storyboards let’s you create your user scenarios yourself. Without the need for any drawing ability. The app includes hundreds of characters and props that allow to quickly compose the storyboard of your product experience.

12. Pocket MBA by Intersog

The Pocket MBA Full Course contains 13 professional-level business courses, delivering a complete business education. Each course provides an in-depth study of a fundamental area of business, which combines complete course texts, interactive flashcards and comprehensive tests combined with an array of user-friendly mLearning features. So far the most extensive business education app. For an app specifically on design and innovation management, see Grow! app.

13. Coolhunting by Captain Lucas, Inc

Cool Hunting is synonymous with seeking inspiration. A global team of editors and contributors sift through innovations in design, technology, art and culture to create daily updates and weekly mini-documentaries. Very interesting source of inspiration.

14. Dexigner by Dexigner

Another source of inspiration is the Dexigner app. It delivers latest design news, events, exhibitions, conferences, and design competitions.

15. Adaptive Path by Adaptive Path

Over hundred inspiring talks from some of the greatest minds in user experience from four years of Adaptive Path conferences on topics like: User experience strategy and methods, The history of the web, What makes games fun, and How to lead creative teams.

16. Bloomberg Businessweek+ by Bloomberg Finance LP

For design managers reading business magazines this app provides all the content on the print edition of the businessweek magazine. Additionally it includes exclusive content and interactive features that enrich the reading experience. Subscribers to the print edition of the magazine get each week’s issue for free.

17. Ideabook – Innovation Management by Gerald Aquila

Ideabook is a simple idea management app. Enter, track, rate and visually analyze your ideas regarding innovation, simplicity, uniqueness and potential.

18. Outpost 2 – Basecamp for the iPhone & iPad by enormego

If you use Basecamp as a project manager, you use it because you want to be productive. This app allows you to use Basecamp on your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, making work even more productive.

19. Pictures of the Future by Siemens AG

An inspiration on how we will live in the future: Which technologies will shape our lives over the next ten to twenty years? “Siemens’ Pictures of the Future” reports twice a year on major technology trends and looks at the latest research in the company’s laboratories. The magazine includes scenarios of the future, features, reports on associated R&D activities at Siemens, and interviews with internationally recognized experts.

20. Grow! by PARK advanced design management (web app)

Learning Design Management while you work is made easy by Grow, PARK’s professional educational program. Grow was developed from over 15 years of design management and innovation consultancy experience, based on our daily practice at PARK and applicable to daily work. It educates professional designers and current design managers in leading best practices. The (web) app is available to all students that are running the In-Company or Cross-Company programs. Find out more at www.growdesignmanagement.com

MY WISH LIST OF DESIGN MANAGEMENT APPS

My wish list, which hopefully gets in the hands of some smart developers:

• Design Value Dashboard App: A dashboard that analyses the value of design management based on predefined key performance indicators.
• Design Guideline App: An app that contains all the recent and up-to date design guidelines of a company.
• DM News App: An app (e.g. from the DMI organization) that presents the latest news in design management.
• DM Recruitment App: Up-to date vacant jobs in design and innovation management. Both for companies looking for design managers and individuals looking for vacant jobs.
• Design Agency Screening: Look up, filter and browse portfolios and competencies of large design agencies.

What are your favorite design and innovation management apps?

This is one of the leading statements in Scott Belsky’s book: Making Ideas Happen (2010).
When I read the book, it felt I could have written it. I do not have the genius to do so, but still the content feels remarkably familar to me…

Scott Belsky’s key point is that having ideas is great, but it is the hard work afterwards that ultimately counts. Hard work in execution, collaboration and leadership. 

As mentioned before, we experience this too in our daily consultancy practice.
Often, lots of our ideas are born in the first weeks after starting a project. We know what is needs to be done, the creative phase is over. Now the hard work starts: planning, communicating, adjusting, coordinating, coaching, discussing, convincing and adjusting again. In some cases this takes years…

In ‘Making Ideas Happen’ many very practical tips are suggested for this ‘hard work’ phase. Some of these I recognise, some I warmly welcome and will apply straightaway.

Thanks Scott, for helping me ‘making design management ideas happen’!

Check out this book at Amazon…

Ever since 1997, when Joseph Pine and James Gilmore first alerted the Wall Street Journal to the importance of user experiences, that issue has been firmly on the agenda of the design world. Indeed, the design of user experiences has been part of the work of PARK’s clients, and PARK itself, for some years.

Through that time, we have learned that, to make the user or customer’s experience with a product a consistent and satisfying experience, it’s important to design every point in the user’s ‘journey’ from a holistic point of view. In fact, aligning design’s different subdisciplines – web design, product, packaging, instructions and so on – to address the user’s journey has been one of the main challenges.

For companies such as banks, retailers, public transport providers and many others, the design of the user’s experience around services, rather than products, represents a still greater challenge. The need in service design is not just to create a consistent user experience, but also to fully integrate this fully with business models, systems and processes. As a result, an even more multidisciplinary approach is needed: skills are required not just in design and its management, but also in mainstream management, business processes and IT.

So far, manufacturing firms haven’t quite faced this challenge. Because service design is new and multidisciplinary, few manufacturing companies have yet developed expertise in it.

At the same time, however, many manufacturing companies have long included services as part of their offer – and many have gone further than this, seeing services as key to profitability. Rolls Royce, for instance, believes its business is keep planes in the air, not just to make and sell engines.

More recently, several product design directors have begun to add expertise in service design to the general capabilities of their design departments. Although we at PARK applaud this move, we feel that the current competencies of product and interaction designers in manufacturing companies are not yet developed enough for such people to give service design the leading place it now deserves.

PARK believes service design functions within manufacturing companies need to be equipped with skills beyond those of design. Manufacturers’ service design teams will need to add experts in business planning, process engineering, call centres, customer complaints and service ‘in the field’. Only in this way will manufacturing companies be able to make service design a fully professional part of their design effort.

At PARK, we work with many clients to help enable them to be more strategically customer focused. By using tools around the topic customer centricity, such as our customer journey map, a day in the life and personas, we develop a thorough approach to uncovering areas to foster costumer centricity. We look into the complete customer journey and identify where & how the company can better engage with their customers. It is important to note that it is customer journey, not just consumer journey. Different customers engage at particular touch points. Therefore lots more areas open to explore for centricity.

Additionally, we create personas to better understand their customers. Presumptions are left behind. It is quite inspiring to see business persons “put their selves in someone else’s shoes” such as a grandmother with arthritis trying to use their products. You can literally see light bulbs going off. We then put these personas, aka customers, through the journey, first an actual journey of what is, then an ideal journey of what could be. This creates a world of opportunities to improve on, which are then typically grouped and rated on potential and relevancy.

Who should actually take ownership and/or leadership to become more customer centric? Ideally, an entire organization should be costumer centric, but that is not the reality. Executives typically only look at short term bottom lines forced to do so by shareholders. Marketing sometimes does, but generally market insights are market (read quantitative) driven. R&D typically focuses on creating technologies first and them finding a fit to the customer via design and marketing.
Therefore, I argue, Design is the leading connection to being customer centric through empathy and deep understanding of all touch points. When managed well, design can help a company become become more consumer centric.

A few key insights to become more customer centric:

1. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer (via personas)
2. Don’t just talk to the customer, but listen, truly listen
3. Use ethnographic methodologies to discover needs the customer may not be aware of
4.  Involve the customer as much and as early in the design process (co-create)
5.  Look to lead users to give new insights

A good company to benchmark customer centricity is the international hearing aid manufacturer Oticon. Their position and mission is “People First” and they proudly claim “People insight forms the starting point of everything we do”. This is more than a brand positioning and market hype; it is truly embedded in the organization and helps steer the company in all of its endeavors.

Is your organization harnessing design to help it become more costumers centric?
I hope so;)

That is what the creative class needs. As a consequence of that designer managers and design agencies should stop to base their internal resources and business model on hours (= costs), hence stop managing with Taylor in your mind. Stop to micro-manage your designers by monitoring their hourly progress or delay! Look to the added value your designers can deliver to your company or to your client. Give them the right environment and develop the right competencies with which they can pump up their creative challenges, increase their moments of flow and accompany profit maximization with purpose maximization. At PARK we try it the hard way…different drive, strongly investing in personal development, more motivation including higher financial performance.

In the other camp, my camp, a designer is only a designer by means of a qualified education, adequate professional working experience, or in occasional situations possibly self-taught through years of dedication and perseverance to learn the trade (e.g. an artist). While this is an interesting topic we could debate all day long (and I am indeed curious to know your position) for me, and the point of this post, is that this statement leads into the question, who is / can be a Design Manager? If everyone is a designer, then it could be argued that everyone can manage (at least their own) design.

Being that I’m with the second camp, that it takes an educated / experienced professional to qualify as a designer, directly lends itself into my position that it takes a person with a qualified education, years of professional experience, or in occasional situations perhaps some other traits (e.g. human resources) to manage design. This is not to say that a Design Manager must be a professional designer, or even have a background in design, but it certainly gives a hand up. And in my view, an essential qualification. While I have seen some design departments managed by non designers  because they did possess a deep understanding of  launching new products & services along with  the people skills to motivate a team and business insights to deliver to the triple bottom line, this is an exception and not the standard.

Design Managers need have to have a thorough understanding of what goes into delivering a  new products/service from concept to launch while taking into account the driving business rationale along with softer management attributes.

However, if one comes only from a design background, with little understanding of the business landscape, or from a non design background, how can they learn the comprehensive elements that factor into managing design successfully? One way, the true & tired way is experience. Nothing can replace years of experience. Another way is to get an education. And while there has been a recent influx of Design Management programs, as with most academic educations, they are based on theory, not practice.

At PARK, we have recently launched Grow, a design management education based on daily practice based and real world experience, not theory. This program aims to deliver a comprehensive foundation to educate designers to become Design Managers. And for Design Managers to become better at managing design.  This extends from the fundamentals to the softer side such as people & presentation skills, culture, and leadership. Grow teaches the fundaments of Design Management in a truly unique way. Combined with live meetings  and individual assignments, rich in multi media and developed for the iPad, Grow offers a cutting edge way to learn design management while you work. We developed this program based on years request from clients that there were lack of experienced design managers in the marketplace, and those coming straight from academia lack the real world experience to manage successfully. Since most companies (actually none we know of) lack any comparable training programs, we decided it was time;)

So the question to you is … who possess the merits to become a Design Manager? And how do they best get there?

Inspiration:

• http://doriantaylor.com/…
• http://www.fastcompany.com/…

Design Singapore Council
Last month, Paula and Aart sat together with Mrs. Wong and Mr. Khamis to learn more about the Design Singapore initiative which was founded in 2003 to develop Singapore as a global city for design creativity in Asia. Singapore uses design to improve capability, enhance the quality of life, and drive competitiveness. How they are doing this is summarized in the following three strategies.

1. Develop Capability
The first strategy focuses on designers. The goal is to develop qualified designers which are able to serve clients worldwide and local enterprises with competitive products and services. Special trainings are offered to help designers in their professional development. Further, Singapore-based designers enjoy financial and organizational support to gain more international presence by taking part at exhibitions, competitions and awards.

2. Enable Enterprises To Leverage Good Design
The second strategy addresses enterprises (the designers’ clients). Enterprises receive support and incentives to leverage on good design for competitive advantage, quality of life and the environment. One of the main initiatives is the so called ‘Design for Enterprises’ program that allows companies to learn more about design and obtain advice on the available resources and programs. To give an impression of this initiative we included a page that visualizes design thinking principles to incorporate design and innovation into business.

3. Drive Innovation and Design IP Creation
Finally, design should keep Singapore ahead of the curve by providing an environment that supports innovation and design intellectual property (IP) creation for both design and industry. For instance, design research and development involves think-tanks and scenario-planning sessions involving internationally renowned design strategists and futurists. Also, a National Design Center is being established as inspirational meeting point for designers and businesses.

The Future Of Singapore?
With Asia becoming a more dominant economic power, Singapore realizes its chances in becoming more influential in the field of Asian and international design. Also, the city of Singapore wants to use design in all levels to transform into a city that integrates design with business, urban planning, sustainability and public life. Whether this vision will become reality will depend on many more factors than design alone. Regarding its geographical location in the heart of Asia, many expect Singapore to become an important gateway between Asia and the rest of the world, or as the Singaporeans say: “A gateway to the future.”

In developing qualified designers and creating future scenarios the Design Singapore Council involves international experts in the field of design and design management. So if you feel you’re expertise can play a role in the future of Asia, get in touch! More detailed information about these strategies and programs by the Design Singapore Council and up-to-date news can be found at: www.designsingapore.org

About our guest writers
Aart van Bezooyen (Owner of Material Stories) and Paula Raché (Communication Designer) are two creative professionals exploring sustainability around the world. During six months they are focusing on the future of our planet with the motto: „It’s Not Easy Being Green“. After South-America, New Zealand and Australia, they traveled through Southeast Asia and recently returned in Hamburg, Germany. Together they are posting on our blog as guest-writers. You can find their earlier writings here from Germany, Brazil, Australia and Indonesia.

As a design management consultant, increasingly, I see the rest of the world catching up with this multi-faceted word. Jugaad is getting the respect it always deserved!

Before I go on further, let me explain Jugaad to the uninitiated. A sneak peak at Wikipedia and this is what I get;

 “Jugaad” is a colloquial Hindi word that can mean an innovative fix, an improvised arrangement or work-around, sometimes pejoratively used for solutions that bend rules, or a resource that can be used as such, or a person who can solve a vexatious issue. It is used as much to describe enterprising street mechanics as for political fixers. In essence, it is a tribute to Indian genius, and holistic thinking.”

Sounds suspicious? Well, I had warned you…remember, Jugaad=a mixed bag of emotions.

Authors of the Harvard Business Review blog, “Jugaad: A New Growth Formula for Corporate America” explain Jugaad as – “overcoming harsh constraints by improvising an effective solution using limited resources”.

Owing to its reputation as the new buzzword, Jugaad is increasingly also being described as ‘Frugal Innovation’.

In India, you can see many examples of Jugaad/frugal innovation around you. It is possible that while in India, you may begin to practise some yourself. One of my favourite examples for Jugaad, which is also mentioned by Karl Moore in his article for Forbes, “The Best Way To Innovation? – An Important Lesson from India” is about the Mumbai Dabbawallas.

Never heard about them? Not too late to find out now.

source: Jugaad – Mumbai Dabbawallas

The Mumbai Dabbawallas are an example of the art of creative innovation, of designing systems within the constraints of illiteracy, population overload and an inefficient infrastructure – Jugaad.

Just like the Dabbawallas, Indian companies are exceptionally good at being adaptable to the most trying of conditions, for example, the $3000 automobile or cellphone services for less than a penny per minute.

I do not believe that Jugaad is only for the Indian mindset. It can be adopted by companies worldwide and it can work for them in this constantly changing global market, that requires companies to be adaptable. In his article for Forbes, Karl Moore talks about how companies can learn to innovate the Jugaad way – by adapting to changes and improvising as the situation demands. This approach is especially useful as companies increasingly face new markets and uncertain conditions. It is an opportunity to create more from less for more people.

As an example in this context, Moore gives the example of GE, which operates tech centers in Hyderabad and Bangalore. GE has introduced breakthrough items such as an electrocardiogram in a backpack and a computer-based portable ultrasound machine. These devices are available for sale at a fraction of their usual prices. It is this kind of frugal innovation that can be very inspirational for companies.

I believe that there is a real potential in frugal innovation. It’s like a competitive advantage for companies who want to manage innovation and creativity in their organizations, keeping in mind their particular contexts.

References:

• http://blogs.hbr.org/…
• http://www.forbes.com/…
• http://www.forbes.com/…
• http://www.youtube.com/…
• http://www.businessweek.com/…