I recently read an interesting report by Booz & Company called ” The Importance of Frugal Engineering.” It cites the development process of the Tata Nano car as a case study to illustrate the imperative of this approach in designing products for the developing world. To me, the idea of “frugal” can and should be extended to the larger platform of international development. This is the vision of sustainable community development that is very different from the standard approach taken today.
The overarching philosophy of frugal requires a ”clean sheet approach” to problem solving. In the case of engineering, this means maximizing value to the end consumer while minimizing nonessential costs. Simply trying to cut costs or scale down existing products that were designed for the developed world does not produce an adequate end result.
Rather, frugal means taking a bottoms-up approach to understanding how people at the “BoP” (or, “bottom of the pyramid”) really live and work. In the case of new product design, planners think through how a product fits into the daily lives of the consumer base and then make deliberate trade-offs to maximize highest utility for the specific purpose at a low enough cost to make the product accessible.
So, for example, rather than starting with the cheapest car currently in their production line and trying to cut costs from there, the Nano’s engineers looked to the motor-rickshaws so commonly found on the streets of India for their understanding of truly basic transportation needs. That’s why they decided to use a single windshield wiper–it cut out complexity and cost while getting the job done satisfactorily. Eliminating a radio was another conscious decision. It cut costs while creating a storage space inside the vehicle, which for their consumer actually met a greater need.
Design thinking is at the heart of frugal. This is the creative and iterative process of building up ideas based on human-centric observations. Design thinking is heavily reliant on innovation, out-of-the box concepts and prototyping or experimentation.
Unfortunately, today’s typical International development activities are the antithesis of design thinking. Rather, they tend to promote cookie cutter “scale solutions,” imposed externally from the top down with little, if any, understanding of local experience, culture, or need. That’s why so many programs fail and how billions of well-intentioned dollars are wasted.
Many of us working on the ground in Afghanistan are deeply frustrated by the expensive, old school ideas promoted by the large aid organizations. They have repeatedly failed to gain traction at the grassroots level or to produce any real change in the lives of the people they are meant to serve. These entrenched development systems are anything but frugal.
Frugal requires execution by agile organizations that nurture—in fact, require–cross-functional teams, open communication, sharing of information and active coordination. Frugal thinkers understand their ultimate objective and are willing to take risk, to experiment and to course correct. They will learn from failure and are positioned in close enough proximity to the subject to differentiate signs of success or failure.
As George Bernard Shaw said, “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.” This is frugal thinking at its core. It is desperately needed in Afghanistan today.
Tags: Afghanistan Booz & Company developing countries economic opportunity frugal engineering George Bernard Shaw grassroots level international aid social change The Importance of Frugal Engineering
Share on Facebook
Connie,
You capture the essence of truly understanding and respecting the needs of the ultimate customer. At Toyota, the concept of lean thinking is sometimes translated as the “least amount of energy required to meet a customer’s needs”. I admire your mission!