You may enjoy also my post on global innovation

http://florence20.typepad.com/renaissance/2007/02/innovation_geog.html

Hi Subbaraman - When it comes to public policy, the “crude quick-fix” still rules. Bangalore traffic is an example. They will build a flyover at one place only to move the congestion to another point a kilometer away. There is no systems-thinking visible here. It’s disheartening.

But I think things have evolved when it comes to the private sector. What was “crude quick-fix” has now become experiment-based baby-steps, often grounded in proven continuous-improvement methodologies. I mention Tata Steel in the article as an example. Another one to look at is Bajaj Auto. They were, like Tata Steel, a product of license-raj – bloated plants, outdated technology, etc. When things opened Honda almost wiped them out. But they have clawed back and are now challenging Honda in almost every two-wheeler segment in India. It’s a classic example of how small innovations accumulate and become significant process or business innovations if the cadence of innovation is high.

Last night I was at a dinner and was chatting with a person who heads global sourcing for one of the ABB business units in India. He pointed out that small firms who started off delivering poor quality are now their best suppliers. In one product category they used to have a return rate of 1.2% from their old non-Indian supplier base which they felt was good. But this small Indian supplier who started off being way worse than the global norm has steadily improved to point of having a return rate of less than 0.2%. Although he didn’t mention other names, he insisted that this was not a solitary example.

What I am suggesting in my article is that the innate jugaad mindset can be harnessed for process and business model innovation. A number of companies, big and small, IT and non-IT, have learnt how to do this successfully. This knowledge is becoming more dispersed within the ecosystem and therefore will continue to underpin more success stories.

Will this jugaad innovation energy touch the public policy and government service delivery system some day? I sure hope it does, though I am not optimistic of it happening in the short-term. Some say that I am wrong. They point to the turnaround of Indian Railways as an example of what’s possible. I don’t see things the same way but then that would be a subject of another post by itself.

Quick fix remedies has to some extent become the bane of India’s progress. People continue to live under a false sense of comfort and complacency because the quick fix seems to have taken the sting out of the problem, for now and gives the impression that people who are accountable have taken action. But more often than not, people have never fixed the problem.

In some cases, there’s a deeper Indian psyche at play. It does seem to me that many Indians feel more indispensable and feel valued when they have to solve a problem, rather than having done something to solve the problem.