Can Limited Resources Lead To Better Innovation?

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

You're listening to the Ted Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. We're talking about how to use and preserve finite resources on the show today, which few people in all of human history did better than MacGyver from that '80s TV show.

NAVI RADJOU: MacGyver was my and remains my favorite TV action hero.

RAZ: This is Navi Radjou. He's an innovation consultant and MacGyver fan.

RADJOU: He will find himself in all kinds of crazy places, you know, in a prison cell, in somewhere in, you know, South America or whatever it is.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MACGYVER")

RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON: (As MacGyver) All right, MacGyver, think - rope...

RADJOU: And he would just look around, and he will find some resources....

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MACGYVER")

ANDERSON: (As MacGyver) ...A smoke alarm, sheets of plywood.

RADJOU: ...That for us doesn't look like something to create a solution.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MACGYVER")

ANDERSON: (As MacGyver) It just might work.

RADJOU: But he can do it.

RAZ: That dude made, like, jetpacks out of toilet rolls.

RADJOU: Yes, yes. I mean, what I like about this guy is that, you know, unlike James Bond, he doesn't wear a fancy suit, he doesn't have a Rolex.

RAZ: James Bond had Q. MacGyver had toilet rolls.

RADJOU: (Laughter) Exactly. MacGyver is like - you know, he's a one-man show.

RAZ: Navi is probably such a MacGyver enthusiast because he grew up in a place where he had to be resourceful - in the city of Pondicherry, India.

RADJOU: It's a very dry climate, so you don't have, you know, much water. Electricity was in short supply. For me, it's like living with less is almost like the norm.

RAZ: About 18 years ago, Navi moved to Silicon Valley, and he started consulting for tech companies. And instead of being wowed by their innovation, he was baffled by how casually they were wasting basic resources.

RADJOU: The one thing that struck me all the time is to see in the evenings all these office buildings being lit up. That's something I never understood is, like, you know, there's nobody working there after 6-7 p.m., but I just see, like, it's all lit up.

RAZ: The other resource Navi noticed companies squandering? Money, specifically when it came to research and development.

RADJOU: Just because you invest more in R and D doesn't make a company more innovative. Maybe we need to look at a different way of innovating.

RAZ: Maybe innovation, he thought, would happen in a more constrained environment.

RADJOU: Because when you put a limitation on resources, you remove the limitation - right? - on creativity because necessity is the mother of invention.

RAZ: Navi calls this idea frugal innovation, and he believes big tech companies could learn from inventors in the developing world. Here's his TED Talk.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

RADJOU: For the past seven years, I have met and studied hundreds of entrepreneurs in India, China, Africa and South America, and they keep amazing me. Many of them did not go to school. They don't invent stuff in big R and D labs. The street is the lab. Why they do that? Because they don't have the kind of basic resources we take for granted like capital energy, and basic services like healthcare, education are also scarce in those regions. Take Mansukh Prajapati, a potter in India. He has created a fridge made entirely of clay that consumes no electricity. It can keep fruits and vegetables fresh for many days. In Africa, if you run off of your cell phone battery, don't panic. You'll find some resourceful entrepreneurs who can recharge your cell phone using their bicycles. Let's go to Lima in Peru, a region with high humidity and receives only one inch of rainfall each year. An intern in college in Lima designed a giant advertising billboard that absorbs air humidity and converts it into purified water generating over 90 liters of water every day. That can literally create water out of thin air. In India, we call it jugaad. Jugaad is a Hindi word that means an improvised fix, a clever solution born in adversity.

RAZ: Yeah, I mean, in some ways, you're more liberated when you don't have as many resources.

RADJOU: I think so because I always believe that when you have nothing to lose, the sky is the limit, right?

RAZ: Yeah.

RADJOU: So I think that a lot of big companies after a while stop innovating and die like Kodak - right? - who missed completely the digital revolution - is because they become so risk covers. So that means they have too much to lose. So when you have too much to lose, you only take baby steps, you know, in terms of discovering new things. But when you start from the bottom, you have nothing to lose. You are like an underdog. So when you are more on the offensive, you tend to innovate.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

RADJOU: I believe that the only way we can sustain growth and prosperity in the West is if we learn to do more with less. The good news is that's starting to happen. Several Western companies are now adopting frugal innovation to create affordable products for Western consumers. Let me give an example. In China, the R and D engineers of Simmons Healthcare have designed a CT scanner that is easy enough to be used by less qualified health workers like nurses and technicians. This device can scan more patients on a daily basis and yet consumes less energy, which is great for hospitals but is also great for patients because it reduces the cost of treatment by 30 percent and radiation dosage by up to 60 percent. This solution was initially designed for the Chinese market, but now it's selling like hotcakes in U.S. and Europe where hospitals are pressured to deliver quality care at lower cost. Ultimately, you'd like to see developed countries and developing countries come together and co-create frugal solutions that benefit the entire humanity.

RAZ: So it sounds like you're proposing that we completely reimagine the way we make things.

RADJOU: I would say yes, absolutely. We have to fundamentally redesign products, rethink the whole supply chain. My feeling is that what you begin to see is that companies also are now recognizing and research shows more and more there is indeed, in a way, a growing awareness among consumers around issues related to the environment. So they also expect companies to behave, you know, more environmentally responsible way. So I think it's going to happen, you know, gradually in the U.S. But when I look at Europe or Asia, I actually see a lot more aggressive moves by the governments, by citizens and by companies to actually embrace new innovation techniques that are more resource-efficient.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

RADJOU: As an Indian-born French national who lives in the United States, my hope is that we can harness the collective ingenuity of innovators from around the world to co-create frugal solutions that will improve the quality of life of everyone in the world while preserving our precious planet. Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

RAZ: Navi Radjou - he is the co-author of the books "Frugal Innovation" and "Jugaad Innovation." You can see his entire talk at ted.com.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FINITE=ALRIGHT")

DAVID BYRNE: (Singing) Three-hundred fifty cities in the world. Just 30 teeth inside of our heads. These are the limits to our experience. It's scary, but it's all right. And everything is finite.

RAZ: Hey, thanks for listening to our show this week on finite resources. If you want to find out more about who was on it, check out ted.npr.org. Our production staff at NPR includes Jeff Rogers, Brent Bachman, Megan Cain, Neva Grant, (unintelligible), with help from Daniel Shookin (PH). Our intern is Shari Fusif (PH). Our partners at TED include Chris Anderson, June Cohen, Deron Triff and Janet Lee. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to ideas worth spreading right here on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

BYRNE: (Singing) Everything is finite. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.