Frugal Innovation (AMA Today at 3PM)

A set of leading sustainable practices is called "circular economy". The goal is to design products using 100% renewable/non-depletable materials. At end of their "use", these products can be reused & recycled again, in a closed-loop fashion (hence the term "circular"). 100 world-leading companies have committed to reinventing their business model using circular economy. In our book, we talk about TARKETT, a world-leading flooring and sports surface solutions provider, which uses eco-design principles to develop products using only rapidly-renewable materials such as walnut shells, pine resin, linseed oil, jute, and cork and recycled plastic material. By 2020, Tarkett aims to become a "circular" entreprise, by using 75% of renewable and recycled materials and eliminating industrial waste going to landfill. Circular economy is now very widely adopted in Europe and Asia (especially China), but it's less well known & practiced in the US. In the book we explain how US companies can adopt circular economy principles as part of their frugal innovation toolkit.

Kunal: in the US, healthcare sector is most likely to benefit from frugal innovation given the growing pressure to deliver better care to more Americans while significantly lowering cost of care delivery. In our book, we provide several examples of companies across the entire healthcare value chain that are moving in that direction. For instance, on the healthcare service front, you have AETNA, a leading health insurer, which is embracing "value-based care" to deliver better care at lower cost. On the product front, medical device companies like GE Healthcare are developing "Super-Value" medical devices that combine high degree of affordability with quality and simplicity. And Novartis, the giant pharma firm, is investing in "continuous manufacturing" -- a breakthrough frugal production process that can fit inside a container and can produce drugs 10x faster and cheaper than traditional drug-making factories while improving quality and reducing carbon emissions up to 90%.

We would have liked to include examples of how to apply frugal innovation in the government sector (Federal/State/Local). As you can imagine, "doing more with less" is need of the hour in the public sector worldwide. But given the "business" focus of our book, we didn't want to bring in the government angle. But we are now working on follow-up reports/articles to describe how federal/state/local government agencies can use frugal innovation to deliver better public goods/services at lower cost.

What's not in the book that you had to take out or couldn't put in?

Everyone gives a huge thanks to @naviradjou for taking the time to do an AMA with us!