Daniel's blog

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In other words, how to turn lack of resources into an advantage?

The Economist has recently published a special report on innovation in emerging markets. I had a chance to discuss it with an alumnus of AIESEC India who is now doing his MBA in LBS and he told me more about the concept of Jugaad.

Jugaad basically means a solution in Hindi or as The Economist puts it – making a do with what you have and never giving up. Indians are often faced with lot of resources constraints but most of the times they manage to overcome them by radically reengineering the process or the final product.

This phenomena is starting to be called a frugal – constraint-based – innovation and jugaad is starting to be coined as a management term. The Economist compares this to a nowadays equivalent to the introduction of mass production by Ford at the beginning of the 20^th century or to the ‘lean’ revolution which took place in Japan in the 1970’s.

So next time you are faced with lack of resources to realize your idea, what is going to be your Jugaad?

Just for illustration:

A good example of frugal innovation is Tata Nano. A bunch of recently graduated engineers who have never build a car before was asked to design one. The result was the world’s cheapest car.

There is quite a lot of leg space actually…

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I have recently realized how important it is to be a good listener. I think it is actually one of the most important skills one can have, both in personal and professional life. But from my own experience I can tell that there are many different ways of listening. Let me think about the main types.

Type 1

You are listening, but not with the intention to understand the other person. You are thinking what to say next or how to ‘steal’ the conversation and take it to a topic you want to. I was like this for quite a long time but I have learned that this is not the way it should be. It is disrespectful and it does not lead anywhere.

Type 2

You are listening with the intention to understand the person, but you are not genuinely interested in understanding what the person really thinks about the subject. You just want to build your arguments against what is that person saying. I disagree with this way of listening as well. People will sooner or later be able to tell what is actually going on in your mind while you are listening to them and they will start building negative feelings about you. Again it is disrespectful and it does not lead anywhere.

Type 3

Finally a good one. You are listening with the intention to understand the other person. I know this can be sometimes difficult. We enter every conversation with already formed opinion. That opinion is based in the information set available to us at the moment and on our ability to interpret that information. Once we have our opinion formed, we tend to compare any new information against it. This can often result in dismissing the new piece of information just because that one isolated piece of information does not comply with our ‘fixed’ opinion.

Two things have helped me to overcome this. The first one is called tabula rasa. It means that when we listen to a new opinion, we forget everything we knew about the topic before and we approach it with a blank page – tabula rasa. That means we do not question things as they are being told to us, we firstly try to understand the whole idea and only once we are sure that we understand it well, we start thinking about it critically. An idea often makes sense only if it is understood properly, individual elements of that idea often do not make sense to us. Therefore it is important to understand the whole idea before we start questioning it.

The second thing that has helped me is the concept of thinking hats. What it means is that when we are listening to somebody, we take off our own personal ‘hat’ and we try to put on the ‘hat’ of that other person. We for a moment forget about our own preconceptions and we try to understand things from the other person’s perspective. If I was in the same situation as that person, if I had the same kind of feelings, what would I be thinking about the topic that is being discusses? Only once we fully understand the issue from the perspective of that other person, we can start thinking about it from our own perspective. It takes effort and lot of patience, but the insights and the level of understanding we than get is amazing.

Closing thoughts

The third type is the most polite one because it means that we are not only listening, but we are also genuinely trying to understand that person. I know that it might be less convenient and take more time than the first two types. But what I have realised is that while it might take more time in the short run, it can save us lot of time in the long run.

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I meant to start a blog for a long time. Why? For two main reasons..

Firstly, I believe that if you get a good idea, you should share it with others! Some people just take things for granted, do not question them and accept the world as it is being served to them. But that is a minority I believe. Most people reflect on things and do get good ideas, but the problem is that they often keep them for themselves. Either because they are not sure whether their idea is good enough to be shared or because they do not have enough time. I think those are excuses, people are just lazy…

Now think about this. You either get an idea about something you like or about something you dislike. In the first case, you should share it because it would be selfish not to do so. In the latter case, not sharing your idea would mean that you accept things you do not like and that you make no effort to change them. And that is wrong, if there is something you dislike, change it. Sharing your opinion is the first step.

Secondly, and this is a selfish reason, I want get better in formulating my ideas and in sharing them in a simple way. This is a great skill that not many people possess. Lot of people can talk for ever without actually saying anything. Good communicators can say a lot by saying only little.

That is all for now, I am looking forward to sharing my ideas with you in the future!