Entrepreneurship & Innovation for the New Normal
Here in India, it’s been 2 months now since we’ve been aware of the deadly novel coronavirus, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration at all to say that in these 2 months, our lives have turned upside down. The country-wide lockdown, that has been in place since exactly a month now, has made us change the way we did, well, almost everything. Now, we’re not able to step out of our houses for absolutely anything at all, not even for buying groceries from the neighbourhood market. The global socio-economic framework that was in place, as we knew it, has been brought to a screeching halt.
As people, we (and to some extent the institutions we build) have this innate ability to adapt to new situations sooner, rather than later. The pandemic and its restrictions have induced all of us to make certain changes to our daily routine. Everyone, and by that, I mean, everyone, is now embracing the new normal.
How do we define the new normal? Simply, we can look at what we have been doing every day since the past month, and get a somewhat clear picture. And it’s subjective: all of us are experiencing these changes in our own ways. For instance, online classes, courses and virtual internships are just some of the things that make up the new normal for me. For others, it might be something else, maybe something radically different. The only trope common to all of our new normals, is perhaps that all of are embracing it.
It’s not even a choice anymore. As the pandemic has progressed, we have slowly learnt that in any case, we have to adhere to the new normal. So, as entrepreneurs, we need to go a step further, and not only adapt but innovate. An entrepreneur cannot help but look for new opportunities. Now, a cynic might say that we’re still going after monetary gains in the midst of a global pandemic, but in my opinion, as entrepreneurs, we are here to make lives better. These three words should be every entrepreneur’s gospel at this point in time.
Entrepreneurs must follow a two-pronged strategy: adapt and innovate. Conventionally, we label innovation as the only long-term goal for us entrepreneurs, but as we have seen, innovation alone cannot help us. Especially during times when our reach and capabilities are restricted, we might have to let innovation take the back seat for some time, and focus on adapting ourselves and our institutions to the roadblocks in place.
Adapting, hence, comes first and foremost. To know more about it, let’s take some real-life examples, at both micro and macro levels. It would be right to say that we’ve all started adapting at our personal (micro) levels: washing our hands as much as possible, maintaining social distancing whenever we go out, and bringing almost everything onto a digital platform means that, in some sort of way, we are adapting. Personally, almost all of my classes in the past month have been scheduled on Zoom or Google Meet, and my professors and course instructors have made sure that there is no downgrade in the quality of teaching. At a different front, another interesting adaptation has taken place: Zomato & Swiggy have now shifted into delivering groceries to homes, as their usual partners, i.e. restaurants and cafes, and have been shut for the past month. The transformation has been rather smooth. Not getting left out, some eateries in my city have also converted themselves into makeshift grocery providers and thus, to some extent, have made up for the losses they are suffering due to the lockdown. Similarly, Uber and Ola have pledged to provide services to transport non-COVID patients, Health workers, doctors and government officials thus taking some load off the ambulance services and at the same time, making up for the suspension of public transport services, doing their bit for the very society that uses their services in times of peace and prosperity. In another case, many distilleries in India and around the world have started producing and supplying ethyl alcohol for use in hand sanitizers and disinfectants.
After much observation, I reached an inference, that macro problems are being solved using solutions at micro levels. The lack of protective gear (otherwise referred to as PPE) during the pandemic has been noticeable, and with large scale factories shut, it puts hundreds of thousands of medical professionals at risk of infection.
To boost production, New Balance, a brand associated with the manufacture of sports footwear and apparel, began making masks fit for medical use by repurposing materials meant for manufacturing footwear and clothing. Interestingly, I’ve come across so many people, around the world, using a similar solution: homemade face masks. In Silicon Valley, two ex-Apple employees are using household utilities such as rubber bands to make protective face masks. Another news article suggests how using something as simple as nylon from stockings can be used to make a homemade face mask which is effective and safe.
What I want to prove, through these examples, is that adaptability and innovation actually go hand-in-hand. No innovation can happen until we, ourselves make efforts to adapt to new circumstances. Adapting to shocks is what fuels innovation, and this has been proven during this pandemic.
Entrepreneurs and their ventures, big or small, all around the world, have shown remarkable ingenuity to overcome their problems. It seems that all of them have been following the philosophy of jugaad innovation.
Jugaad is North-Indian slang for any type of shoddy, inexpensive, alternate arrangement, and thus the term can sometimes carry a negative connotation, one that suggests that it is nothing but a mere temporary, makeshift product/system that cannot be relied upon forever. Jugaad innovation, on the other hand, a term coined by Professor Jaideep Prabhu, (author of a book of the same name), is a “frugal, flexible, and inclusive approach to problem solving and innovation.”
The book is divided into different chapters, each highlighting and illustrating a key principle for jugaad innovation. Not so coincidentally, all of the principles might apply to innovation in the current situation: Seeking opportunity in adversity, doing more with less, thinking and acting flexibly, keeping it simple, including the margins, and of course, following your heart.
While each holds its own importance, it is imperative to focus on the primary principle, seeking opportunity in adversity. With so much hullaballoo over the economy going bust, we, as entrepreneurs, must always have our thinking caps on and continue seeking new prospects. According to the book,
“Jugaad entrepreneurs perceive harsh constraints as an invitation to innovate. Modern-day alchemists, they transform adversity into an opportunity to bring value to themselves and their communities.”
Another principle, that I believe every entrepreneur should keep close to their hearts, is to include the margins. It is necessary for an entrepreneur to bring the marginal consumer into the mainstream. Radical solutions that are affordable and high-utility must be presented the marginal consumer. “Their inclusive business models engage low-income and nontraditional communities not as passive consumers, but active value co-creators.”, writes Prabhu.
Design has essentially, always been a part and parcel of innovation. In today’s period, design thinking has come up, and has pointed to a new way of sorts, writes Dennis Hambeukers in his article, “Why Design Thinking Is Taking The World By Storm.” According to him, the new way is:
· more aligned with the human condition,
· flexible,
· concrete,
· engaging,
· connects and brings out the best in people.
And hence, Human-centric design thinking is a philosophy, that could perhaps act to supplement innovation during these times. Being human-centric while innovating is of supreme importance in this period.
Examples can be used to illustrate this very well: Everyone who wears spectacles will agree on how it’s a pain to wear PPE, because the moist air from our lungs gets directed to our glasses, fogging them in the process. Personally, this is a major problem for me, and this often discourages me from wearing masks. It just so happens, that re-designing masks so that the airflow does not get directed upwards is a simple solution to this problem. Interestingly (but perhaps unsurprisingly) such a small tweak can actually save potentially hundreds of thousands of lives by reducing the risk of infection.
This approach has saved lives earlier too. Using human-centric design thinking, a Bangalore startup called Embrace, created a $200 sleeping bag that can keep a premature baby warm for hours on little to no electricity. Shaped like a miniature sleeping bag, Embrace contains a pouch filled with a phase-change material that melts when heated and maintains a consistent 37 degrees Celsius, as the wax hardens over the next four to six hours. In the absence of not only incubators but also regular electricity, it does the trick and is easy enough for an untrained, illiterate villager to use.
Embrace also has a home version, which could again save perhaps, millions of new mothers and premature newborns (who are already low on immunity) from infection. In the home version, the wax-pouch comes out of the insulator, and the wax can be heated by simply using hot water. Out of all examples of human-centric design thinking that I’ve read, this is one innovation that makes the most sense while we’re in the midst of a global pandemic.
Personally, I also tried my hand at creating something through human-centric design thinking in the past few weeks. While out on road trips, I remember times when I had to wash my hands without any running water available. The solution (a classic example of jugaad) was for someone to hold a bottle of water, and pour the water on my hands as I used a small, white bar of generic soap to scrub them clean. I’m sure most of you would be familiar with this jugaad.
So while we were being told to wash our hands with running soap and water, I did some research of my own and found out that a significant proportion of Indians do not have running water coming to their households, either at some points during the day or permanently. That rules out the possibility of washing hands regularly. I started going through everyday objects I could find at home. I finally came across an old water bottle, that had a plastic nozzle on top, which pours water when the nozzle is pulled away, something akin to this design:
I figured that if such a nozzle was attached to a large foldable container (preferably made of tough but thin plastic to make it heavy duty while saving space), it could dispense water when required using a mechanism that pushes the nozzle out by not using the user’s hands. I’ve come up with a rough design:
Do let me know what you make of this.
I’ve always firmly believed that entrepreneurship, in whatever form, has a very specified aim: To solve a problem. Before a problem can be solved, and solutions can be presented, we must make sure that we define the problem.
If anything, entrepreneurs have an advantage when they innovate for the new normal, in the fact that the problem is already defined. Circling back to the gospel truth that I mentioned, every entrepreneur must solve problems with one single, large-scale objective in mind: make lives better.
