Jaideep Prabhu
Most organisations know how to innovate when budgets are generous and markets are stable. They are far less sure how to generate growth when resources are tight, customers are price-sensitive, and the competitive pressure is coming from firms built to do more with less. The harder question is how to redesign the business, and sometimes the institution behind it, to produce value under those conditions rather than in spite of them.
Jaideep Prabhu is Cambridge Judge Business School’s Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise, and the academic who defined frugal and jugaad innovation as serious growth strategy for companies and governments working under constraint.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jaideep Prabhu
- He wrote the books that put frugal innovation on the boardroom agenda. “Jugaad Innovation” and “Frugal Innovation” are the reference texts, and the latter won the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year in 2016.
- He connects innovation theory to what is actually happening in India, China, Brazil and Africa, not as case studies but as strategic signal for Western firms facing the same constraints a decade later.
- His work travels into public policy. “How Should a Government Be?” takes the same logic on digital, lean operations and citizen value, and applies it to how state power is now exercised.
- He holds two chairs at Cambridge Judge Business School and is a Fellow of the British Academy, which means the frameworks have been pressure-tested by academic peers, not only by consultants.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Marketing and Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise, Cambridge Judge Business School
- Director of the Centre for India and Global Business at Cambridge Judge Business School
- Fellow of the British Academy; Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge
- Co-author of “Jugaad Innovation” (Jossey-Bass, 2012) and “Frugal Innovation” (Economist Books / Profile Books, 2015), winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2016
- Author of “How Should a Government Be? The New Levers of State Power” (Profile Books, 2021)
- Commentary and profiles in The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Times, Le Monde, BBC News, BBC Radio 4 and Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Biography
“Jugaad” is the Hindi word for an ingenious, improvised fix. In 2012, Jaideep Prabhu and his co-authors turned it into a serious argument about how Western firms should learn to innovate when money, time and certainty are all in shorter supply. That book, and its successor “Frugal Innovation”, reframed a generation of conversations about growth under constraint.
Prabhu holds two chairs at Cambridge Judge Business School: Professor of Marketing and the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise. He directs the Centre for India and Global Business, and sits as a Fellow of the British Academy and of Clare College, Cambridge. The research sits where marketing, innovation, strategy and international business meet, with a steady focus on what firms in emerging economies are teaching firms everywhere else.
“Frugal Innovation”, co-written with Navi Radjou and published with The Economist, won the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year in 2016. His 2021 book “How Should a Government Be? The New Levers of State Power” extended the same question beyond companies, arguing that digital infrastructure, lean operations and new organisational forms are reshaping what governments can credibly deliver.
The through-line is practical. Leaders who work with him come away with a clearer view of how to compete on creativity and economics at the same time, and a sharper sense of which constraints to design around and which to design with.
Key speaking topics
- Frugal and jugaad innovation
- Business model innovation in emerging markets
- Growth strategy under constraint
- India and the global innovation economy
- Digital transformation in the public sector
- The future of government and state capacity
- Global marketing and competitive advantage
Ideal for
- Boards and executive teams setting innovation and growth strategy for cost-sensitive or emerging markets
- CSOs, CMOs and heads of innovation looking to pressure-test portfolios against leaner competitors
- Public sector leaders, policy teams and ministers redesigning delivery around digital and citizen value
- Corporate India programmes, global leadership forums and any organisation with a serious India or emerging markets thesis
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of frugal innovation that distinguishes it from cost-cutting and makes it usable at board level
- Named examples from India, China, Brazil and Africa of firms that built scale under constraint, and what they reveal about Western incumbents
- A framework for spotting which parts of the business model are most exposed to leaner competition and which offer the fastest route to reinvention
- For public sector audiences, a clearer view of the levers that modern states are using to deliver more with less
- Specific, citable references from the three books that senior teams can build internal conversations around