Jugaad, India-genous creativity

by | Sunday, September 07, 2008

Jugaad is a Hindi word which does not have a straight forward equivalent in English. I guess the closest phrase I would say would be “situational or indigenous creativity,” the ability to make do creatively with the tools/resources one has at hand.

On Jugadu.com I came across a pretty good definition:

Jugaad refers to an improvised or jury-rigged solution; inventiveness, ingenuity, cleverness. It means creative improvisation and finding alternative ways of doing improbable things. It reflects on a person’s ability to think out of the box and optimize resources in the best possible way.

This is a great example…;

Jugaad has a long history in India, though I had a hard time coming up with documented examples. This posting is a beginning in that direction.

  • Wikipedia article on Jugaad
  • Here is an article in the Times of India with some examples: Makeshift miracles, the Indian Genius for Jugaad.
  • Jugaad as a Business buzzword, and in the software industry
  • Some good examples, with photographs, from Tripti Lahiri’s India journal,here (though you may have to scroll down a bit to the section titled “Indian D-I-Y (December 31, 2007)” get there)
  • Some photographs on Flickr that may be of interest: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
  • In an educational context, the idea of Jugaad is quite close to the idea of “repurposing technology” that I have often argued about. In India, the Hoshangabad Project had an initiative called Kabaad Se Jugaad, literally “Creativity with Rubbish” where found objects or discarded objects were used to create educational kits or toys. (Here and here are some Flickr photos of people engaged in Kabaad Se Jugaad.)

A few randomly selected blog posts…

TPACK Newsletter #40, March 2019

TPACK Newsletter #40, March 2019

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Sending this note from Purdue University where I am visiting the School of Engineering Education. Had a great dinner last night with Karl Smith (whom I am catching up with after a couple of years) and Johannes Strobel. Karl picked me up this morning and drove me over...

Exploring Organizational Creativity & Mindfulness with Ravi Kudesia

Exploring Organizational Creativity & Mindfulness with Ravi Kudesia

Recently our on-going series on creativity, technology and learning for the journal TechTrends has focused on the relationship between mindfulness and creativity, particularly in educational contexts. Our first article set the stage for a deeper dive into this...

Election 2.0

An op-ed in today's NYTimes by William Poundstone about how the web can be used during an election to prevent election fraud. As the article describes a computer scientist and a mathematician "have proposed an ingenious method that would combine paper ballots and a...

Ambigrams in new book

The Art of Deception: Illusions to Challenge the Eye and the Mind is a new book edited by Brad Honeycutt. Brad is a graduate of Michigan State (Go Spartans!) and maintains a blog (anopticalillusion) devoted to optical illusions. A few of my designs have ended up on...

A defining moment!

I started blogging at the beginning of this year - January 1, 2008 4 days later, when Obama won the Iowa caucuses, I a posted a video of his speech, and asked a simple question, "Is this a defining moment of our time?" See it here Almost exactly six months later, on...

The joy of learning: A reflection

The joy of learning: A reflection

What is this thing called learning? What does it mean to learn something? What makes us want to learn? Why is it fun? Why do we want to know? Even as educators, we often don't take the time to ask ourselves these foundational questions. So it is rewarding when we get...

New presentation tool

Todd Edwards at Miami University just told me about this new presentation tool called Prezi.... You have to see it to believe it. Just amazing. Check it out at http://prezi.com/

21st Century Learning, one school’s ongoing story

Recently I had been invited to the Birmingham School District to speak to the administrators, teachers and broader community about their recent initiatives on 21st Century Learning. I had a wonderful visit - which I was reminded of by this article (On the Front Lines...

3 Comments

  1. Playskool Alphie

    Hi,

    Thanks for the inspiration article.

    Kabaad Se Jugaad, what an awesome way to be creative!

    🙂

    Reply
  2. Punya Mishra

    Thanks Bernie. Great resource. Keep up the good work. ~ punya

    Reply
  3. Major Fun

    This concept is a great gift to the world. You might also be interested in the Junkyard Sports Community – http://junkyardsports.com/community – where we take this idea into the invention of new, informal sports.

    Reply

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