INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

MB – 19 -03 AYESHA SADDIQUE

MBA (3.5) SMESTER 3rd
Prof. JAVARIA ABBAS

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

ASSIGNMENT # 4

Navi Radjou
Radjou is an innovation and leadership advisor based in Silicon Valley. He won the 2013
Thinkers50 Innovation Award and spoke at TED Global 2014. He is a regular contributor to
Harvard Business Review online. Previously, he served as Vice President at Forrester Navi
Research in Boston and San Francisco. An Indian-born French national, Navi lives in Palo Alto,
California.

Frugal Innovation: key Points For Doing Better With Less

➢ Engage and Iterate: Earlier models of top-down R&D are time consuming, inflexible,
complex, and expensive, and can alienate customers and cause excess environmental
waste. Though 90 per cent of corporate R&D spend occurs in the West and Japan, an
estimated 80 per cent of new products fail at launch. A better solution would be a market-
focused, agile R&D model, starting off with good-enough solutions based on active and
immersive customer involvement. Iterative prototyping and high-speed innovation call for
new kinds of titles and incentives.
 ➢ Flex your Assets: New materials, manufacturing tools, and supply chain techniques
can reduce the supply-demand gap and improve distribution and procurement. These range
from carbon fiber and 3D printers to micro-factories and supply chain analytics.

➢ Create Sustainable Solutions: Environmental sustainability is not an optional CSR

channel but an essential strategy for long-term success. Consumers and regulators are
demanding more eco-friendliness and accountability from companies. This has led to the
rise of cradle-to-cradle solutions for recycling and upcycling, going beyond the ‘circular
economy’ to the ‘spiral economy.’ A new trend is also the rise of the ‘sharing economy.’
Sustainability should be built right into the R&D phase, and should be promoted as cool
and aspirational.

➢ Shape Customer Behavior : In addition to changing their own goals and structures,
companies can also actively engage with their customers to promote sustainable living.
Visualization tools, self-monitoring, gamification, social comparison, social learning and
storytelling are useful techniques here to motivate, nudge, inspire, and empower customers.

➢ Co-create value with Prosumers: Consumers today are transformed into prosumers
who want meaningful brands conversations and personalized solutions. The rise of the
‘horizontal economy’ includes the maker movement of tinkerers, collective buying sites,
P2P sharing platforms, and crowdfunding hubs. Companies should pursue a strategy of co-
discovery, co-development, co-marketing, co-branding and co-marketing with prosumers.
A useful categorization of such customers is dreamers, validators, ideators, makers,
evangelists, sales agents, and fixers.

➢ Make Innovative: friends The need for hyper-collaboration calls for increasing skills
in big companies to partner with suppliers, competitors, government, hackers, tinkerers and
startups. (Also see my article 15 innovation tips: how large corporations can successfully
engage with startups.) Companies need innovation brokers who understand the language
of the organization, its creative partners and customers. Corporations need to become more
agile and not just file patents but monetize them.

CONCLUSION:

The concluding chapter ties these principles together by showing that such impacts can be brought
about only by bold leadership, setting of inspirational goals, choosing measurable targets,
reinventing business models, and cultural change management.
EXAMPLES: Of Frugal Innovations In Pakistan
As Pakistanis, we have experienced such scenarios multiple times in the real world. Yes, load-
shedding! The time when we are yanked back to the real world from our so-called digital lives and
we cannot stop complaining about an hour of misery.
a) Recently, Pepsi held a successful CSR campaign in collaboration with Liter of Light
Pakistan to brighten up IDP camps. They converted up-cycled Pepsi bottles into solar
powered lights which were installed in houses, hospitals and localities. The campaign made
a real difference in the lives of the people in the Jalozi camp. This is the classic example
of frugal innovation, a topic Tech Juice shed a light on a few months ago. Yes, frugal
innovation is possible in Pakistan

b) For example: Popinjay–celebrating local art, Savaree –providing transport

facilities, Tent School System –taking innovative education to slums
and remoteinterview.io – solving the problem of hiring programmers.

c) frugal innovations from Pakistani individuals which were publicized on media from time
to time but they were never implemented in the country. These frugal innovations ranged
from solar cars to inexpensive electricity generation to smart homes but most of them were
either sold to foreign companies or were simply forgotten.