The Hindu Business Line : Indiagenous ingenuity

Jugaad at work: Two engineering students with their invention – charging the cellular phone by using the smoke from the bike, in Karimnagar, Andhra Pradesh.

A couple of years ago, I was giving a lecture on innovation in New Zealand when my presentation went blank. On examination, I found that there was a loose connection in the pin that connected my laptop to the projector.

“Use the Blu-Tack”, called out someone from the audience. Sure enough, I found a packet of the adhesive propped near the projector. I rolled a bit of the sticky stuff, propped it under the plug and things went back on. Later, in the break, I remarked on the fact that this was clearly not a once-off problem.

“Oh, it happens all the time,” snorted my genial Kiwi host, “that’s why we have Blu-Tack handy.” Another participant chimed in to tell me that the Kiwis prided themselves on their ingenuity. I burst out laughing and told them that this was a famed Indian trait – indeed, we had a name for it – jugaad – innovation through improvisation.

I gave them some of the famous examples of jugaad and we shared a mutual grin at this unlikely common trait between our two cultures.

(It also occurred to me that, like India, perhaps Kiwis too continued with the improvised quick fix rather than sort out the problem: when I suggested that if this kept happening it might be simpler to replace the plug than to keep losing the flow of a presentation, there was palpable amazement at the thought of such a permanent solution!)

When my co-author Parmit Chadha and I conceptualised our book on innovation, the first one to explore innovation in India, the concept of jugaad was tossed at us often - many listeners waxed eloquent about the innate creativity in India and suggested that it was proof enough India’s amazing innovativeness.

Jugaad (a Hindi word) translates roughly to ‘making do’, and refers to all the small, on-the-ground, quick-fix demonstrations of native ingenuity, just-in-time solutions to a problem at hand, typically in a resource-starved situation, where necessity and survival make inventors out of lay-people.

The roadside mechanic who can make emergency repairs on your expensive car with spare pieces of wire; the motor attached to a cycle-rickshaw which gives the rider a break from pedaling; the use of old car-tyres to make footwear.

Many years ago, when my son was a toddler, we bought him an ice-lolly from a vending cart and were trying to figure out how to stop most of the ice-cream from dripping steadily onto his shirt.

The vendor took one look at the child and pulled out a small paper cup from his cart, pierced it with the end of the stick and inserted the lolly into it. Voila! My son could eat peacefully while the cup collected all the errant drips.

I’ve always wondered why ice-cream makers have not thought of adding a similar drip holder as part of the design. Washing machines used in Punjab to churn lassi. Godrej Hair Dye used in buffalo markets to touch up animals. Recycled plastic bottles used for drip irrigation. These and many other similar examples are used as support for the view of Indians as an innately creative people.

Perhaps the jugaad gene is hardwired into Indians as an evolutionary adaptation for an environment in which things, more often than not, fail to work – if you want to get things done, you have to learn to reconnoitre your way around poorly designed and executed processes and systems.

A friend attended a workshop abroad – during one breakout session, groups were made based on their countries of origin and had to respond to a scenario of crisis management, where urgent tasks had to be completed during a complete breakdown of infrastructure due to a natural disaster.

Apparently, the teams representing more organised, process-driven societies floundered in confusion - only the team from the Indian sub-continent remained unfazed and dismissed the lack of electricity or other amenities as a cause for concern and came up with ideas that got the job done.

Clearly, Indians are comfortable with chaos and resource constraints don’t cramp our creativity. (Alas, there was no Kiwi team, so it is not clear if their adaptation to chaos is just as good). The movie Outsourced paid tribute to this recently, when it depicted an American call centre manager using the expertise of a street-smart local buddy to quickly hook up electrical connections on the roof of the flooded office, so that business-as-usual carried on, much to the amazement of the head honcho visiting from headquarters.

There is no questioning Indian creativity – not at the individual level. But does this necessarily translate into innovation at the organisation level?

How do we correlate the innate ingenuity of a people with the innovation gap at a more macro level? To understand this, we need to look more deeply at the jugaad phenomenon. More on this next time.

(Radhika Chadha is a consultant in strategy and innovation and co-author of Innovative India: Insights for the Thinking Manager. Karate-gy is the proprietary name of the strategic exercises conducted by Paradigm Management Knowhow Ltd.)

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