Jugaad - frugal innovation in India

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"Jugaad – frugal innovation in India" is a brand new report describing the methods and the mindset which companies and organizations in India use to create low cost solutions under very scarce circumstances. 

It's based on my recent trip around India. 

The report argues that some of these methods could well be transferred and used by Western companies.

There are many indications that the market will demand lower priced solutions, and for Western designer and engineers, the Indian approach could be an inspiration and a challenge to our usual way of developing new products.

The report is available in English and Danish.

India: So run down - so beautiful

This is normal

Robo-jugaad

Should you need to have your robot repaired while in India, it's nice to know that there is a shop in Pune, that will do it for you, cheap and while you wait. No need to use those fancy high priced Japanese service labs.

5 (very rich) persons living in a 27 story skyscraper - in Mumbai

 

India never ceases to surprise. It’s just so weird sometimes. Now this: In Mumbai, which is not exactly Monaco, the owner of one of India's largest Industry conglomerates Reliance, has built a home for his family of 5 persons. It has 27 floors and is supposed to have cost a billion dollars to build. Vanity Fair has photos of the inside – looks more like a hotel than a home to me. Certainly, it's quite a contrast to the rather hardcore slums in other parts of the city. 
When I passed it the other night, it didn’t look like anyone was home.
You stare and wonder.

Trains of Mumbai

The trains in Mumbai are filled beyond the brim. I'm surprised by the calm that these guys radiate, despite hanging on the edge of the door.

Ugly dog in ugly underwear

I collect photos of ugly dogs. There are some amazingly ugly, infested, worn out, and just weird specimens out there. Just met this one on a crowded street in Mumbai.
How did this come about, I wonder?

The conspicuous ecologist

Here it is, at last: our new 3,5 KW PV panel. Let the sun shine!

Audio interview with Michiel Schwarz, co-author of Sustainism

I reviewed Michiel Schwarz and Joost Elffers book "Sustainism is the new modernism" for the Danish newspaper Politiken. The review is in Danish, but I also did a telephone interview with Michiel Schwarz in which he talks about some of ideas behind the book, and why they chose to coin a new word – sustainism – and design new icons in order to describe the characteristics of the future.

The interview lasts 14 minutes.

E.O Wilson - interview

Oh, I should put this up: I did an interview with biologisk E.O Wilson about his most recent - and excellent - book The Social conquest of Earth.
You can hear it here, at Danish newspaper Politikens website. 

I did the interview in conjunction with my review of his book. If you can read Danish, you can read it here. 

Ord, der trænger til en opstramning

Det er forbløffende, hvordan mange af de helt centrale ord, der definerer vores kultur har meget forskellig betydning, alt efter hvem man er.

Vi bruger ord som vækst, kvalitet, fællesskab, demokrati og kreativitet til at beskrive, hvordan vi ser verden hænge sammen, men det, vi forstår ved begreberne, kan være vidt forskelligt.

Resultatet er en kommunikation, hvor vi kan sige og høre de samme ord, selvom vi hver især mener noget forskelligt.

Faktisk kan betydningerne af nogle ord – vækst, eksempelvis - være direkte modsatte. Resultatet er at man kan anstrenge sig for at realisere én opfattelse af vækst, samtidig med at man forringer mulighederne for at opnå det, andre forstår som vækst.

Når et ord bliver udvandet eller det får en ny betydning, indebærer det, at det oprindelige begreb, som ordet beskrev, bliver vanskeligt at tale om.

Der er grundlæggende ord i vores kultur, som har fået så forskellige og brede anvendelser, at de ikke længere er præcise nok til at handle efter.

Der er ord for centrale ideer, der historisk har fået en bagage af associationer, som gør, at ordet i sig selv afskrækker mange fra at overveje det bagvedliggende begreb.

Endelig er der ideer, forhold og mekanismer der først netop er opstået, ellers som vil præge verden fremover, men som endnu ikke har fået et alment kendt ord, der gør det muligt for de fleste at diskutere og tænke på det.

Uden mere præcise forståelser af de ord, vi bruger, risikerer vi at forværre de problemer, vi vil løse. Uden de rette ord, kan vi ikke beskrive vores visioner.

Ved at diskutere ordene, giver vi dem mening og får selv mening. Vi skaber redskaber til at skabe forandring.

Hvad mener vi egentlig med….?

- Kreativitet

- Fællesskab

- Demokrati

Utilstrækkeligt i forhold til realiteterne og tidens problemer

- Forbrug

Forbruger, mindset og rolle, i modsætning til borger

Deltagelse, openness, sharing

- Frihed

Til hvad, for hvem

- Ansvar

Påtage sig ansvar, ansvarlig, i modsætning til u-ansvarlig

- Integration

Forpligtelse, Interdependence, indbyrdes afhængighed, connectivity

- Vækst

Udvikling, produktivitet, velstand, effektivitet

- Kvalitet

Nytte

- Lighed

Polarisering, mangfoldighed

Wrap

A few snapshots from wonderful Iceland

Bill Clinton: interdependence means you can't get a divorce

Bill Clinton recently participated in one of London School of Economics public lectures - talking about the activities of his global initiative fund. Like all of the amazing LSE events, you can listen to it as a podcast.

During the Q&A (41 min. into the recording) he talks about some very fundamental political issues: 

"...The world has become completely interdependent, but we can’t make up our minds what that interdependence is going to look like. Interdependence simply means you can’t get a divorce. That’s all it means: that you can’t get away from each other. But it might be positive, it might be negative, it might be both. To pretend that the United States and China are not going to share the future is nuts. Or the US and India, or Europe and... You pick, fill in the blanks. So the world now is awash in a kaleidoscope of questions that all come down to this: are we going to share the future – or try to take it away from someone else?

Will we adopt a conflict model or a cooperation model to resolve our differences and to meet our own objectives? And I basically believe - in a world where growth and opportunity, and even basic humanity is drastically constrained by severe in-equality and the un-availability of jobs that pay an affordable living, by instability that is brought on not only by the aftermath of terror but by the financial crisis and by a totally unsustainable use or resources that causes climate change and local resource depletion - the only thing that makes sense is to try to develop a path to a shared future, where you have shared responsibilities and shared prosperity, and where people respect their differences, but think that their common humanity matters more. No other strategy will work."

There is only one Watson - and Siri is its prophet

There is only one traffic and Google is driving it.
The Cloud is everywhere, in everything.

The fascinating story of plastic - for better or worse

Another great talk from the Long Now Foundation's series of seminars on longterm thinking:
Susan Freinkel, a journalist, presents the story of plastic. Fascinating, informative, and ultimately disturbing, Freinkel tells how quickly this material has conquered the earth. When Titanic sunk, no part of it was plastic. Today, most of us would be very seriously challenged to get by even a few minutes without using something made of plastic. It's everywhere, and unfortunately it ends up accumulating in nature, in oceans and landfills, where it breaks down only very slowly.
If you have an hour or so for listening, this podcast will fill you in on the state of plastic.

China: Getting old before they get rich

Getting old before they get rich, is a sentence that’s popping up a lot about China. If you want a quick overview of just how dramatic and fast the ageing of the Chinese population is, this article in the Economist, ”China’s Achilles heel” is a good place to start.

Among the facts are:

Shanghai is believed to have the lowest fertility rate in the world, just 0,6 in 2010 – way below the 2,1 rate which is necessary to keep the population number stable.

A fast rise in lifetime combined with rapid urbanization and the one-child policy means, that the number of old people is growing, and the number of young is dropping much faster than in the west. By 2020 it is expected that a third of Shanghais population will be over 60 years old.

The 4-2-1 families of four grandparents, a couple and their only child has become the norm, and obviously this will become a considerable burden on the lone child soon.

China is not prepared.  The systems of pensions and healthcare cover only a fraction of the population. Just adapting the physical infrastructure to accommodate elderly is a huge task. 

How this plays out at the personal level is well illustrated by this BBC program”Assignment: Too old to get rich” – which portrays how elderly in Shanghai get by. Some are faced with climbing the stairs to the 8th floor because there is no elevator; some are ashamed because their spouse is becoming demented in a culture that often sees dementia as a form of mental illness. Others join the crowds of elderly in IKEAs cafeteria, sipping coffee and hoping to meet a companion.

One obvious conclusion: there is vast potential for Danish companies to deliver expertise on how to support an ageing society. But the solutions need to be really cheap.

Socializing kids to see themselves as co-creators

Entrepreneurial spirit is not a Danish characteristic. Our culture tends toward the less risky, less offensive approach to life. Much has been said about the need to make our educational system instill a more entrepreneurial culture, and train kids to see starting a business as a real possibility. The discussion often includes the need for leadership.

In typical Danish fashion I would like to suggest another line of thinking: maybe we should go broader. Perhaps what we need is to educate kids to become participants and co-creators, to show initiative, to assume responsibility and contribute – as opposed to passively accepting what ever we are offered in a role as receivers, consumers, and clients.

Once we have that kind of culture among kids, I’m confident that entrepreneurs will emerge. Also, we would have the foundation of a democracy that is not just a matter of saying yes or no, but one in which we see eachothers as participants and co-creators.

Sommerhus for sumpere

Af og til er det svært at forstå hvad man ser. I Vollerup, nær Kalundborg, er 6 sommerhusgrunde til salg, men jeg kan ikke rigtig forestille mig, at nogen skulle få lyst til at købe dem. De ligger midt i en sump, som det fremgår af billedet. Der er vel en kilometer til vandet, og der er masser af fine, tørre sommerhuse til salg i området til finanskrise priser. Hvad tænker ejendomsmægleren på? I don't get it.

The business of organizing civil society

The German ride-sharing service ”Mitfahrzentrale” turns out to be a really good example of how a little bit of commercial organization can mobilize resources in civil society that would otherwise be wasted.

I used to hitchhike quite a bit. You would find a good place to stand, maybe hold a sign with your destination, stick out your thumb and hope for a ride. It’s a cheap way to get around, it makes better use of all those empty car seats on the highways – and it allows for all kinds of great meetings and conversations among strangers.

But it’s pretty unpredictable for both riders and drivers. You may end up with a jerk beside you. You never know how long the journey will take, and as a driver, it’s not likely that the rider will offer any payment. Should anything happen, you probably will have no idea what the identity of the other person is.

A ride-sharing service takes a lot of the uncertainty out of this. You go online, post where and when you are going (e.g. Hamburg to Kolding, Thursday afternoon) or you browse the list of rides that are offered by drivers who will take riders.

There’s a set price, so the driver can recover some of the costs (and the ride-sharing services gets a cut of that), and the users of the service are registered. In some cases there are reputation systems, so you can asses the person you will be riding with beforehand.

The point here is that by adding a minimal level of commercial activity, you can make the sharing of resources much more attractive and easy. There are great resources that can be mobilized in the non-commercial realm of civil society, but a lot of the potential is never realized, because of uncertainty, inconvenience, opaque circumstances etc.

This points to a very interesting area of new businesses: providing the framework to harness the potential and resources of civil society.

Generally, I believe we will see a lot more hybrid organizations in the future, where commercial and non-commercial players interact, resulting in the creation of a lot more value than if the game was only pure commercial or pure non-commercial. 

There is a lot of discussion about "gov 2.0" and what the appropriate role of government should be. One of the slogans is to move "from provider to enabler" - in other words, that the government should focus on creating the necessary conditions, infrastructure and framework for productive interaction among companies and citizens. 
That is exactly what the ride-sharing service does. It doesn't deliver the driving, but enables people to get around in a more efficient way. 

What should we tag this with? Collaborative consumption, mesh economy, social networks, enabler/provider, frugal solutions. There is a lot going on. 

A cheaper, stronger state

Interesting challenge:
In the future, governments will need to have more influence, but at a lower cost to tax payers. 

Insights from IDEO

Anyone interested in innovation can probably find inspiration in the brief online newsletter, Patterns, which IDEO publishes. It's a great place to stay updated on the latest buzzwords. Most recent issue is about Gamification, other recent topics were "Serve the people", "Social media bolstering big brands" and "Care and repair".

Lots of good stuff, easily accessible.