Navi Radjou

Frugal innovation: How to Do Better with Less

The business world is radically changing. Tighter budgets and dwindling natural resources (energy, water), new technologies (AI), and empowered customers are all driving disruptive trends like the sharing and circular economy and the Maker movement.

In this context, how can firms get high-quality products to market faster, better, cheaper?

The answer: frugal innovation—the art of doing more, and better, with less.

Frugal innovation is a disruptive business strategy that increases your financial performance while also addressing climate change and social inequality.

Using frugal innovation, you can develop affordable and sustainable quality products and services that have a positive impact on society and the planet—thus satisfy value(s)-conscious Gen Y/Z consumers—while consuming the least amount of resources possible and without polluting.

With a global market of several trillion dollars for frugal products and services, frugal innovation is revolutionizing business and reshaping R&D, marketing, HR and leadership practices.

Navi will show you how you can adopt the six principles of frugal innovation to gain in agility and efficiency and adapt continuously in an increasingly demanding and volatile market.

How to Thrive in the Frugal Economy

The 200-year-old capitalistic economic paradigm based on profit maximization and “more with more” (using more resources to create more products) is coming to an end.

Instead, digital technologies, new regulations, anti-globalization movements, and millions of value—and values—conscious Gen Y/Z consumers and employees are giving rise to the frugal economy.

A frugal economy generates greater value for all stakeholders in a highly efficient, socially inclusive, and eco-sustainable manner—using fewer resources and without polluting.

This new multi-trillion-dollar economy is fueled by 3 mega-trends—circular and regenerative business principles, distributed (local) manufacturing, and business-to-business (B2B) sharing—and digital technologies such as blockchain, AI, 3D printing, IoT and digital twins.

Award-winning innovation expert and TED Speaker Navi Radjou will show how to proactively reinvent your organization—and your entire ecosystem—to thrive in the frugal economy.

Specifically, he would give you the new perspectives, principles, and techniques you need to adopt frugal innovation, the art of “doing more—and better—with less”—so you become more agile and can profit from doing business in a socially and environmentally responsible way.

Learn from Navi how to future-proof your business.

By adopting Navi’s best practices, you will become more agile and more profitable and reinvent your business, so your organization can operate with an entrepreneurial spirit, a social heart and an ecological soul.

Beyond CSR: Becoming a Conscious Enterprise

Gen Y/Z consumers and employees no longer tolerate “green-washing” and even less “purpose-washing”.

It is time for your company to go beyond Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sincerely embody the societal and environmental values ​​that you promote.

Drawing on concrete and inspiring examples from different sectors and regions of the world, Navi will identify the crucial changes to your organization—in terms of culture, structure, and leadership—that will enable you to become a “conscious enterprise”

A conscious enterprise generates profit while contributing to the “triple regeneration” (people, places, and planet).

80% of consumers prefer brands that are “regenerative” rather than “sustainable” (they find “sustainability” too passive)

Navi will show you how your company can (and must) engage with actors from various sectors (public, civil society, academia) to co-construct a conscious society where it is possible for your organization to “do better with less” and for your customers  to “live better with less”.

JUGAAD: Turning Adversity into an Opportunity

Based on his bestseller Jugaad Innovation (+250,000 copies sold worldwide), Navi will introduce you to the new perspectives and the six principles you need to master jugaad, the art of turning adversity into opportunity and improvise ingenious solutions with little of resources.

The jugaad mindset is a strategic tool that will allow you to survive and succeed in the VUCA environment (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) that will dominate the coming decades.

Using many concrete case studies, Navi will show how your employees can apply this resilient and creative spirit of jugaad to develop highly innovative products and services, as well as breakthrough new business models that embody positive values and generate strong economic and social growth.

Beyond Inclusion: « Integralizing » Diversity for Sustainable Growth

In today’s complex and fast-paced world, organizations need to be adaptable, resilient, and creative to sense and respond to unexpected threats and opportunities. To boost their agility and innovation capacity, businesses must learn to leverage the growing diversity in their workforce and in their larger ecosystem.

Rather than try to ‘integrate’ differences in their organization—by uniting everyone based on the “lowest common fear factor”—Radjou will explain how businesses can learn to ‘integralize’ diversity—by unleashing each individual’s fullest potential and uplifting everyone toward a “highest shared aspirator purpose”.

Using several real-life examples of pioneering organizations and leaders (whom he calls the ‘integralizers’) and drawing on his own multicultural (Indian, French, American) background and 25 years of global work experience, Radjou will show how you – as business leaders – can go beyond inclusion and fully leverage diversity to build and sustain an agile and innovative organization.

Transforming your Smart Managers into Wise Leaders

Drawing on his book From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom, Navi offers a different and counter-intuitive approach to leadership that goes beyond the optimization of intelligence and leverages your innate wisdom.

Wise leadership involves cultivating greater self-awareness, broadening one’s perspective, integrating logic, emotions and intuition into decision-making, and acting with ethical clarity, discernment, flexibility and authenticity. This new paradigm is the basis for lasting success in a purpose-driven post-digital society.

Wise leaders are best placed to help their organizations thrive in the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) environment that will dominate the coming decades.

Drawing on inspiring case studies from wise leaders from around the world, Navi will identify the six key capabilities that your managers can cultivate and apply to lead more effectively in the age of artificial intelligence (AI).

As Navi points out: “You can’t out-smart AI, but you can out-wise it!”