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1-Page Summary of Jugaad Innovation

Mitticool

Mansukh Prajapati is a potter from the western state of Gujarat in India. He never finished high school, but he’s an inventor who created a clay refrigerator called the Mitticool that keeps food cold without electricity. It works by using water and evaporation to cool down food inside it.

In 2001, an earthquake hit Prajapati’s village. The local newspaper featured a story about the devastation accompanied by a photo of an earthen pot smashed to pieces. The villagers used clay pots to keep water cool, so the photo legend read: “Poor man’s fridge broken.” This caption sparked Prajapati’s idea for a real refrigerator for poor people that doesn’t need electricity.

After experimenting with clay for a couple of months, Prajapati developed a prototype. He sold the product to local villagers and it became a hit in India and around the world. When he saw how poor people embraced his clay refrigerators, Prajapati had another eureka idea: Take craftsmanship that’s used by artisans and transform it into mass manufacturing methods. With this new way of working with clay, he taught his techniques to women in his village over time. His next invention was a frying pan that holds heat superbly and costs only $2. Today, Prajapati is the guiding light for an entire industry with numerous employees worldwide who develop useful products for poor people everywhere using ingenuity and willpower to overcome adversity or scarcity as they see fit. Prajapati is living proof of what Indians call Jugaad – which means determination combined with ingenuity can achieve almost anything despite obstacles or scarce resources.

Jugaad

Jugaad is an innovative solution or improvised fix. It’s resourcefulness and cleverness come together to create a product that does not exist in the market. In Brazil, it’s called gambiarra; in China, zizhu chuangxin; in Kenya, jua kali. The French know it as Système D; New Zealanders call it “the #8 wire.” Americans used to label this ingenuity with the phrase “Yankee ingenuity,” but now they call it DIY (do-it-yourself).

Jugaad is not a new business methodology or process. It’s not even a specific tool that organizations can use to improve their businesses. Jugaad is an art and culture, something people do on the fly when they need to solve problems without resources. The author says jugaad has universal application no matter what country you’re in or what language you speak.

Western Jugaad

While jugaad is often associated with Indian entrepreneurs, it has a distinguished tradition in the West. Benjamin Franklin was one of the founding fathers of America and an inventor who helped others while not seeking to make money from his inventions. This fits into the classic jugaad spirit: working hard to attain your dharma (responsibilities you must assume to live properly fulfilled).

Cyrus McCormick, an American from the 19th century, built a machine that automated grain harvesting. He did this by using his family’s barn as a lab and working with meager resources. People all over the world benefited from his invention because it made food supplies more plentiful. In addition to inventing the reaper, he also developed new plows that were better than previous ones. During his time there was a lot of jugaad innovation in America where people used their creativity to develop beneficial products and processes despite having few resources at hand.

“Top-Down R&D”

The West used to be a great place for jugaad, but industrial development has changed that with large companies and structured methods.

Western companies are slow to react and take too long to develop new products. They don’t embrace the jugaad ethos of “more with less.” Instead, they try to do more with more, which results in overengineered products that cost a lot to make. The structured R&D approach is inflexible and doesn’t allow for innovation. Jugaad allows developers to create new products faster than established companies can.