A New Business Buzzword: Jugaad

admin | March 9, 2010

The Centre for India and Global Business at Cambridge University says there’s a new business term. Organizations have added it to other buzzwords that include Six Sigma, total quality, lean and kaisen, the Japanese term for continuous improvement.

Jugaad (pronounced joo-gaardh) comes from a Hindi slang word that means an improvisational style of innovation that’s driven by scarce resources and attention to a customer’s immediate needs, not lifestyle wants.

That means inexpensive invention on the fly, according to Business Week.

In an economy where companies have less money for research and development, and where consumers are trading down to good-enough products and services, they say development on the fly has its place.

The term is now found at Apple’s in-house training programs and those of other companies.

At Cisco, which opened what the San Jose company calls a second global headquarters in Bangalore in 2007, the innovation agenda is about affordability and scale.