Frugal Innovation: How to do more with less

by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, The Economist

Winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2016

Frugal innovation is a way that companies can create high-quality products with limited resources. Once the preserve of firms in poor markets, Western companies are now seeking ways to appeal to cost-conscious and environmentally-aware consumers at home. With an estimated trillion-dollar global market for frugal products, and with potentially huge cost savings to be gained, frugal innovation is revolutionizing business and reshaping management thinking. This book explains the principles, perspectives and techniques behind frugal innovation, enabling managers to profit from the great changes ahead. The book explains:

How to achieve mass customization, using low-cost robotics, inexpensive product design and virtual prototyping software.

How consumers and other external partners can help develop products

How to implement sustainable practices, such as the production of waste-free products

How to change the corporate culture to become more frugal

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, India, Management

272 pages, Paperback

First published February 3, 2015

About the author

Navi Radjou is an innovation and leadership strategist based in Silicon Valley. He is a Fellow at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and a World Economic Forum (WEF) faculty member. He is a member of WEF’s Global Agenda Council on Design Innovation and a regular columnist on HarvardBusinessReview.org. Navi is co-author of the bestseller Jugaad Innovation: A Frugal and Flexible Approach to Innovation For The 21st Century (jugaadinnovation.com). The Economist calls it ‘the most comprehensive book yet to appear on the subject’ of frugal innovation.

Reviews

[Kritika]

A must read for every budding entrepreneur . It taught how to use less resources to impact the most powerful and sustainable business .

I would suggest to all read it , as every one of wants to be business owner at some point of life .
so better start finding ideas near your surroundings .

[Vishal Kale · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of the better known management books to be written – Frugal Innovation: How To Do Better With Less; thus I was actually looking forward to this, in the hope that I can draw some lessons, practical real world lessons, from this book; and enhance my understanding and knowledge. In a nutshell, that was only partial. As a concept, the book does its job – that of frugality being essential. But, for the rest, it is by and large an acecdotal book with little relevance outside a limited circle of applicability. This does not meant the book is bad; just that it is a niche book, limited to Western Markets and Technology Intensive Manufacturing. I rate it 3.0 stars maximum. That said, there is a lot to be learnt – if you can look beyond the stated, and draw conceptual learnings for yourself. In fact, that is the only reason this 2 stars worth books gets to 3.0 stars.

THE BOOK
The theme of the book is around doing better with less; it sticks to this theme throughout – laying out the overall approach and the fundamentals. Let us get straight to the fundamentals – for the rest is just fillers, and highly anecdotalal. It proposes an eminenty usable framework that all of us can adapt to our industries; this is where the book fails big time. It missed the opportunity to derive the fundamental conceptual learnings these excellent collection of anecdotes offered the unique chance of doing. For that is the principal difference between anecdotes & case studies – lessons that we can learn in fundamentals.

The framework is based on 6 key elements : engage & iterate; flex your assets; create sustainable solutions; shape customer behaviour; co-create value with prosumers; make innovative friends. Engage & Iterate talks about customers, and engaging with them. The second and third need no explanation – simply involving proper optimal use of resources {Money, Resources, Time} & creating environment friendly solutions. Shaping Consumer Behaviour deals with altering consumer behaviour in a desired direction; prosumers are the most proactive consumers who can be engaged with to develop new solutions. The last is simply collaborating with small companies, partners etc who are adept, fast and can add value to the larger company. The book closes with a chapter on fosteting a frugal culture.

Read More : https://reflectionsvvk.blogspot.in/20...

[Mitesh · Rating 3 out of 5]

In India, I have regularly heard stories or experienced innovations evolving out of a necessity to 'do more with less'. The authors have just formalized the principles which the Western companies can apply (especially ones who have generally experienced abundance). Overall, a good read with multiple case studies.

[Anasua Mukherjee Das · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better with Less [Book Review] . Journal of Scientometric Research, 2016, 5(2), 168-169. http://jscires.org/article/162

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this at the recommendation of current supervisor, Tony Tallent. It was surprisingly good, especially for a nonfiction business book! The authors have a conversational tone with plain language that is compelling and easy to read. I was energized by the examples given and excited to ruminate on how some of the points may be applicable to my own work.

The authors break down frugal innovation into six principles (Engage & Iterate, Flex Your Assets, Create Sustainable Solutions, Shape Customer Behavior, Co-Create Value with Prosumers, and Make Innovative Friends) with leading and ending chapters on how to engage people in your own workplace in the process. Each of the principle chapters includes a "case study" (or, real life example) of the principle in action. Published in 2015, it was satisfying to read case studies of actions that have now become industry standards, underlining their success!

[Jesse Nyokabi · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do we achieve mass customization, inexpensive product design and virtual prototyping software?

How do consumers and other external partners help develop products?

How do we implement sustainable practices, such as the production of waste-free products?

How do we change the corporate culture to become more frugal?

These questions landed me to this book, ‘Frugal Innovation’ by Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu.

Radjou and Prabhu demonstrate that frugal innovation is one of the most critical emerging models of value creation for both businesses and the customers they serve.

The practical roadmap and numerous cases in this book find the beat of the new customer-led world order where velocity, synergy, empathy and involvement come standard. The future will be about doing more with less, and here we see how.

This book is very contemporary and gives a good compendium of cases in each of the models. I am quite amazed to think about the amount of research which would have been undertaken to compile this.

But given the models are very new and growing means that the research must have taken at a very good speed. I found so many cases which I wanted to highlight when I realized that I might end up highlighting the entire book.

The authors are keen observers of the "frugal" innovation movement and have organized this book around their "Six Frugal Principles":

1. Engage and iterate. Start with the customer, observe, pivot, and engage in a rapid iterative product or service development process.

2. Flex your assets. How to meet the growing demand for tailored products and services where and when they are wanted.

3. Create sustainable solutions. Companies can develop waste-free and self-sustaining product solutions that benefit both businesses and the environment.

4. Shape consumer behavior. Companies can influence consumers into behaving differently and feeling richer while consuming less.

5. Co-create value with prosumers. Consumers, especially the tech-savvy millennial, are evolving from passive individual users into communities of empowered "prosumers," who collectively design, create, and share the produces and services they want.

6. Make innovative friends. Collaboration with external partners can facilitate lean, flexibility, and speed to market.

"Frugal" is a contrarian approach to the ways companies organize today for innovation. Success requires cultural change for organizations committed to success in this new, highly demanding environment. Radjou and Prabhu address this by outlining the path to a frugal culture. It requires leaders to embrace and communicate: the "what" - dynamic goals with a bold commitment; the "how" - adoption of new business and mental models; and the "why" - why change management is crucial to survival. How these are communicated and instilled vary across companies.

Frugal innovation must be a serious consideration for all companies today. It is the model in developing countries where customers demand affordable and sustainable products, and product developers are resource constrained.

This new class of companies is not focused on short-term stock market gains, maintaining legacy margins but on long-term adoption and through-put.

Frugal Innovation is particularly intriguing because it approaches the hardship many businesses face today, turns it into an opportunity and offers optimistic and inspiring solutions for it. The authors did an excellent job in presenting a quite complex phenomenon in an easy to understand and engaging manner. The examples they provide are extremely insightful and keep you interested throughout the book.

The authors do not only raise a lot of interesting questions, but also offers some out of the box answers. Finally the book offers an extremely accurate picture of today’s consumers’ needs and wants, which is necessary for businesses to understand if they want to compete in today’s competitive landscape.

Leaders must think and act as gardeners, avoiding command-and-control structures.
Frugal leadership is about unleashing value with minimal effort. Enable creativity from the bottom up.

What matters most in the frugal innovation journey is not process, strategy or structure, but leadership. Ultimately it's about people.

I would definitely recommend this book to academics, entrepreneurs as well as managers.

[Leo GM · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been through chapter 1 and half of chapter 2. But I can say that the the book sometimes makes me laugh as it thoroughly describes pitfalls and bottlenecks that the company where I work at is facing. You really feel on the terrain the rise of a new R&D age that old management is not able to process or identify creating clashes with the millennial generation which is hungry for game changing methods... Definitely a good read!

[Lance Willett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical guide, easy read, & good desk reference to review the principles.

Leaders must think and act as gardeners, avoiding command-and-control structures. Frugal leadership is about unleashing value with minimal effort. Enable creativity from the bottom up.

What matters most in the frugal innovation journey is not process, strategy or structure, but leadership. Ultimately it's about people.

(page 217, in conclusion)

Paperback from "The Economist" books.

[Pierre Raffoul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The innovation process does not need to be so costly and over planned in R&D Departments. Instead, companies can follow a Frugal Approach by which they innovate by cooperating with their competitors, engaging their prosumers and not consumers, aiming for more sustainable solutions and developing spiral economies among other strategies
This one is a must read!

[Thanh Tùng · Rating 4 out of 5]

It did a good job explaining the concept of "Doing better with less". It urges me to re-think many aspects of my work life to make better things with the least effort. My favorite quote from this book is, "use the (new) plan to challenge ourselves to think and act differently."

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most inspiring books I've read in a long time. The authors did an excellent job of laying out the theorectical framework of frugal innovation with lots of real-world examples to illustrate the approach in action.

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of examples of frugal innovation.

[dv · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good follow-up to the first book Jugaad Innovation.

[Alan Fricker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavily in the corporate world but with applicable lessons beyond it. Libraries have frequently been frugal but may be not always innovative enough

[Russell Yarnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book that reveals a new way of thinking. You have to challenge what you know about business in the west and envision different conditions.

[Angharad Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

I skim read this book, choosing the sections that met my needs. Certainly gave me ideas to consider in my new job.

[Carlos Viesca-Lobaton · Rating 2 out of 5]

A slim idea that's been around for centuries. It feeds on concepts that are not really sustainable and supports its arguments with examples that have not resisted the test of time

[Rhnair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had earlier read the book “Open business models” by Henry Chesbrough, which was focused on the Open Innovation model.
Frugal innovation is an interesting name to a cluster of business models emerging – whether it is through larger sharing model , open innovation models , resource constrained model or bottom of the pyramid model. It is the proliferation of the net which is playing a strong enabler in this. And yes, the driving ideology being - fail early, fail fast and fail often.

This book is very contemporary and gives a good compendium of cases in each of the models. I am quite amazed to think about the amount of research which would have been undertaken to compile this. But given the models are very new and growing means that the research must have taken at a very good speed. I found so many cases which I wanted to highlight when I realized that I might end up highlighting the entire book !! So, had to curtail the impulse for that.

While the case studies are in a way educative enough , Navi and Jaideep have tried to extract some six common principles driving frugal innovation. I found Engage & Iterate and Co-create with Prosumers to be very interesting . While I have interacted with Techshops, but the way they are getting adopted by big manufacturing corporates was very interesting. Surely, customers are the most powerful source for any innovation , and more so for frugal innovation.This book can tell you how to get around doing it

Micro factories was another interesting case being discussed here. While it may not find application in major metal and petrochemical operations, but surely there are many other applications of this.

Tarkett was a very good case study in Sustainability in true sense of ensuring growth of an organization, which is relying on resources which are not going to last long. Cradle to cradle being practiced at its best. Method was another good case in the same.
It was also interesting to see how sharing business models (Airbnb, Relayrides, BlaBlaCar, Parkatmy house, yerdle, etc ) are forcing established manufacturers like BMW to innovate new business models. However, if such models proliferate, what will be the impact on the manufacturing economy also could have been spoken about.
There are so many other cases that referring to all of them would amount to almost reproducing the book.

So, if you are one of those in the larger 80% group of companies who are wondering what frugal innovation is all about and wondering how totally unrelated models have the potential to devastate an existing business, do read this book. It is almost like a guide to innovation – the last chapter actually helps one answer the question of why should one innovate. The book may have a slow start as the topics seem to be jumping frequently, but keep reading on and it gets very interesting. Yes, it could have been stitched better, but a stitch in time is more critical, so with this book.

[Ghost14 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its a very Indian perspective. Probably applicable on the global scale in several cases, as long as the visibility of such operational changes does not show itself on the customer-facing functions. Because after all, the third world syndrome is not something that will be easily swallowed by a consumer of the developed world.

But having said that, provided the trend towards frugality is within boundaries that prevent the risk of creating an aura of extreme sacrifice in terms of spending paradigms, the concepts in the book are pretty constructively anecdotally and analogically relevant.

[Aishwarya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book on Good reads first reads giveaway. I would have been more attracted should the two writers have dedicated more analysis on experiences in less developed countries where they dont have sufficient resources. Otherwise its a good read!

[Sid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frugal Innovation like Jugaad provides some good tools, ideas of disruptive models and interesting practices used by innovative industries. For some reason though i felt it lacked the charm of Jugaad Innovation, but still a good read!

[Delhi Irc]

Location: GG7 IRC
Accession No: DL027258

[Christos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book all in all, written for a lay audience. It rumbles on sometimes though. Liked it and suggest it.

[Girish Shivakumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jugaad Innovation was about frugality in India and in this follow up book the authors present jugaad in the modern developed world. It is interesting to relate sustainability with frugality.

[Anuradha Goyal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Detailed review here https://www.anuradhagoyal.com/frugal-...

[Harnam Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is awesome and full of frugal ideas and techniques that can be used in business

[Indrajit Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book for budding entrepreneurs for knowing how they can achieve a lot with less and how innovation is more research driven.

[Vaibhav Manchanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well articulated with adequate examples to show you exactly why this sort of thinking is important.

[Bassam AlKharashi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good concepts but ....

I expected to find tools and techniques to apply frugal innovation. Unfortunately, the book provided various some good concepts. _

[Thomas Zarzecki · Rating 3 out of 5]

High level simple and clear. Good companion to UX books as scope is wider yet releveant.