Source — Radjou, Prabhu & Ahuja, Jugaad Innovation (2012), excerpt
- Title: Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth (book excerpt)
- Authors: Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, Simone Ahuja
- Publication: excerpt hosted by Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR); book published by Jossey-Bass, 2012-03-28
- Date: 2012
- URL: https://ssir.org/books/excerpts/entry/jugaad_innovation_think_frugal_be_flexible_generate_breakthrough_growth
- Accessed: 2026-09-03
- Type: primary (the book's own text, directly excerpted and read, not a review or secondhand summary); promotional/credulous stance — the authors are the concept's own popularizers into Western business discourse, the closest parallel on this project's file to Jugaad Innovation's role for jugaad that The Little Book of Hygge or Lagom: The Swedish Art of Living a Balanced Life play for their words.
Extract
The authors' own working definition: jugaad is "a colloquial Hindi word that roughly translates as 'an innovative fix; an improvised solution born from ingenuity and cleverness.'"
A competing etymology, disagreeing with Wiktionary's Sanskrit-derivation account: the authors state "the origin of the word jugaad, in Punjabi, literally describes such makeshift vehicles" — i.e., a Punjabi (not Hindi) origin, and a vehicle-first (not abstract-quality-first) semantic history. This directly conflicts with Wiktionary's account of a Hindi word ultimately from Sanskrit yogyā (sources/wiktionary-jugaad.md) and is recorded here as an unresolved disagreement between sources, per this project's standing practice, not silently resolved in favor of either account.
The book's central philosophy, quoted directly: jugaad is "a unique way of thinking and acting in response to challenges; it is the gutsy art of spotting opportunities in the most adverse circumstances and resourcefully improvising solutions using simple means. Jugaad is about doing more with less."
A claim of near-universal Indian practice: jugaad is "practiced by almost all Indians in their daily lives to make the most of what they have," illustrated with examples such as repurposing bottles and using missed ("flash") phone calls as a form of free communication.
Acknowledged but minimized negative connotation: the authors concede the word carries "a slightly negative connotation for some" but immediately reframe it as "the entrepreneurial spirit of jugaad... practiced by millions in India simply to improvise clever — and completely legitimate — solutions."
This is a clear instance of this project's recurring "cultural politics" pattern (marketing a national concept back to an English-speaking audience, softening or omitting its more contested dimensions) — here directed at a business/management readership rather than the lifestyle-book readership of hygge or lagom, but structurally the same move: contrast this excerpt's brief, minimizing acknowledgment of jugaad's "negative connotation" against the sustained corruption critique independently documented in sources/jauregui-2014-jugaad-corruption-abstract.md, sources/theconversation-birtchnell-2012-jugaad.md, and sources/wharton-jugaad-to-justice-2013.md.
Gaps
- Only the SSIR-hosted excerpt was read, not the full book; the book's later chapters (per secondary summaries) elaborate "six principles" of jugaad not covered in this excerpt.
- The Punjabi-vehicle-origin etymology claim is the authors' own assertion, unsourced within the excerpt itself (no citation to a linguistic source).