Economist The - Frugal Innovation: How to do more with less

FRUGAL INNOVATION

Praise for Frugal Innovation

Long practised in developing nations out of sheer necessity, frugal innovation is now becoming a strategic business imperative in developed economies, where consumers demand affordable and sustainable products. The flow of industrial knowledge has thus become a two-way street, where the North and South, East and West learn from and exchange with each other. No business leader in the 21st century can ignore the paradigm shift fully described in this book.

Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO, Renault-Nissan Alliance

Through the comprehensive set of case studies they offer in their new book, 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. In a hyper-competitive, resource-constrained world, the companies that will succeed are those that can develop and market new solutions that are resource-light and cost-effective without sacrificing quality. Frugal Innovation provides an essential blueprint for how to approach this business imperative the right way.

Indra K. Nooyi, Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo, Inc.

Frugal Innovation distils years of thinking and experimentation into an effective and innovative how-to guide for companies large and small. It should be required reading for executives who want to get to market faster and more efficiently while delivering what customers want.

Beth Comstock, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, GE

Frugal Innovation offers valuable insights for business leaders everywhere who are facing a familiar challenge: how to do more with less and generate sustainable value for customers, shareholders and society. To stay relevant in an increasingly digital world, organisations must embrace a frugal approach to innovation in order to increase productivity and agility, create competitive advantage and ultimately fuel growth.

Pierre Nanterme, Chairman & CEO, Accenture

Radjou and Prabhus Jugaad Innovation challenged the top-down Western approach to innovation by offering an agile, bottom-up model. Frugal Innovation moves this further and faster forward. 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 as standard. The future will be about doing more with less, and here we see how.

Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi

Radjou and Prabhu show the benefits of viewing resource limitations as an opportunity. In our increasingly resource-constrained world, consumers are demanding affordable, high-quality products that are environmentally friendly and socially inclusive and numerous innovators are already obliging them. Frugal Innovation insightfully articulates how Western companies can evolve to capture opportunities presented by the burgeoning do more with less economy.

Dominic Barton, Global Managing Director, McKinsey & Company

In a world of budget cuts where we all strive to do more for less, Radjou and Prabhu provide real practical examples of how we can all learn the lessons of frugal innovation. They successfully draw out the wider social and environmental benefits of frugal innovation and the concept of prosumers in a way that is both engaging and practical. A great read.

Iain Gray, Chief Executive, Innovate UK

An excellent and bang up-to-date primer on how to do innovation cheaply, quickly, flexibly and with close attention to users and customers approaches which are, perhaps surprisingly, diametrically opposite to the ways in which so much innovation is organised today.

Geoff Mulgan, CEO, NESTA

Frugal innovation is an idea whose time has come. Downward pressures on cost and the need to use resources sustainably demand this new approach to innovation. In this seminal book, Radjou and Prabhu explain clearly how frugal innovation works and illustrate their case with a host of practical examples from companies around the world. They have captured the wave of the future.

Sir Michael Barber, Chief Education Advisor, Pearson

Frugal Innovation offers a compelling path forward for small and large companies striving to cost-effectively develop products and services of high quality that deliver real value to customers.

Jennifer Tescher, President and CEO, Center for Financial Services Innovation

Frugal innovation is a critical business strategy for companies to prosper in a world where customers are both value-conscious and values-oriented. It challenges Western companies to create high-quality products that are affordable and sustainable as well as desirable and meaningful for end-users.

Carol L. Cone, Global Chair, Edelman Business + Social Purpose

Radjou and Prabhu offer a clarion call for leaders in mature organisations to rethink and reinvent their fundamental approach to innovation by drawing upon the smarts of their people rather than the riches of their organisations. Frugal Innovation shows how established companies can stay relevant by learning to think and act like challengers again.

Liz Wiseman, Thinkers50: Top 10 leadership thinker and author of Wall Street Journal bestsellers Multipliers and Rookie Smarts

The certainties of rising consumption in the 20th century are gone. Austerity, aspiration, personalisation and planetary limits all demand that we take a new approach to business. But what should it be? Radjou and Prabhu paint a vivid picture of how business can blend values and quality to deliver the personal and social balance that 21st-century consumers want.

Mike Barry, Director of Sustainable Business (Plan A) at Marks and Spencer

With the cost of R&D increasing year on year, it is important for pharmaceutical companies to keep a focus on ensuring positive returns from investment in R&D and innovation. To be successful requires R&D to be organised differently, in ways that simultaneously improve both effectiveness and efficiency an approach we at GSK are taking. Frugal Innovation is a timely book that provides insightful and practical guidance to firms trying to do more with less.

Stephen Mayhew, Head, R&D Strategy Development, GSK

At Thinkers50 we have been following the development of the ideas of Radjou and Prabhu for some time. They are exciting because they challenge many fundamental assumptions about how and why companies innovate; and they are important because frugal innovation is an idea of and for our times. This book will accelerate the re-invention of how we understand and practise innovation.

Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove, founders, Thinkers50

Health care may be the global sector most urgently in need of Radjou and Prabhus insights in Frugal Innovation. Aging populations and surging demand for affordable services confront health-care leaders everywhere with a stark reality: innovation must be harnessed to create massive, sustainable improvements in health delivery systems without crippling economic growth.