Book Review: Jugaad 3.0

Jugaad 3.0 gives an eye-opening overview and insightful guidance on how to enable intrapreneurship, leveraging new ways for collaboration and enabling creativity that leads to meaningful and sustainable innovation. It’s a book on how to get a corporation running based on innovation which comes not from outside but within.

The shelf life of well-established companies keeps shrinking as new entrants replace old ones in rapid succession. Even brands that seemed invincible only a few years ago are in danger of being disrupted by fast-moving startups. In this unprecedented environment, how can any business stay ahead of the market? Companies can no longer assume innovation will ‘just happen’ – it must be seeded, grown and successfully harvested. They must disrupt themselves.

In Jugaad 3.0, innovation expert and bestselling author Simone Bhan Ahuja guides readers through the DIY (Disrupt-It-Yourself) system that will sustain innovation and retain DIYers, the employees or intrapreneurs – most committed to solving the problems of the future, even if it means moving far beyond ‘business as usual’. Using DIY approach, organizations can build their ability to innovate and create an approach for growth that harnesses the creativity and knowledge of employees at every level.

 

The book convincingly makes the case for the mobilization of ‘Intrapreneur’: the change agents that reside within the organizations. Intrapreneurs are entrepreneurs, technically, who give shape to their plans from within the walls of an organization. Simone proposes 8 key principles that can lend strongly to frugal ingenuity within organizations. These principles combined from the backbone of the book are Keep it Frugal, make it permissionless, Let Customers Lead, make it Fluid, maximize return on Intelligence, Create the Commons, engage passion and purpose, and add discipline to disruption. In one of the chapters, Simone analogizes Intrapreneurship with Avengers-style ensemble cast. She envisages an ecosystem where individuals with complementary skills could join forces from far corners of the organizations to crack big goals.

As the title suggests, there are three factors working here that have to be put together – fast, fluid and frugal. When we talk of Jugaad being ‘fast’, it is actually asking for the impossible in most companies where the hierarchy has to be sidestepped and the bureaucratic processes dodged. The second factor spoken of is being ‘frugal’, which is an easier hurdle as when there is a limited cost involved, it is easier to accept from above. The third clue provided is that the exercise must be ‘fluid’, which is interesting. This actually involves people from across the organization coming together and not being restricted to just one set of employees in, say, the product innovation department.

In a clear, concise style with expert advice and real-world examples, this book provides a new lens to help companies become faster and more fluid offers easy options to tailor the system to each company’s unique circumstances, and presents strategic lessons that open up the full spectrum of innovation and make it sustainable.