Frugal tech can make innovation affordable

Delhi - With the global economy in danger of falling into recession, the world is seeking egalitarian innovation in technology now more than ever before.

India's mission to Mars highlights how people can change the world by repurposing existing tech and tools to spur innovation.

At the start of the year, the World Bank issued a stark warning that the global economy stands perilously close to falling into recession. But this doesn’t give the tech world permission to stand still until markets improve.

The world needs egalitarian innovation more than ever, the World Economic Forum says. Pricing the most transformative technologies so that only the most affluent counties and individuals can afford them will have dire consequences for all of us.

Reducing costs doesn’t always have to mean cutting corners or reverse engineering top-tier tech and using cheaper components. Resources are better used in thinking about what makes an experience work so well. As such, the biggest expense in product development should always be brain power.

Innovation certainly doesn’t need to be all-encompassing or grand. Small, iterative change can have just as great an impact over time if it brings down costs and opens up genuinely useful technologies to broader audiences – and more importantly those that can happen now.

The solution hiding in plain sight is often the route to victory, so challenge assumptions and shift perceptions to flush it out.

Better doesn’t have to mean new. Instead, use what you already have to make what you need. Redeploy, recycle and recombine the tools, materials and ideas already in your possession to solve a problem.

An additional benefit of reusing existing or even low tech is that as well as keeping costs down, it is inherently more sustainable.

The space industry may not immediately spring to mind when we consider frugal technology, but this sector has wittingly or unwittingly become a poster child for jugaad.

The results of this approach are apparent in the commercial sector in which players such as SpaceX have been able to reduce the costs of commercial launches – but also in state-sponsored space exploration.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) became the fourth space agency and notably the first of an Asian nation to successfully reach Mars. In 2014, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), arrived two days behind NASA’s MAVEN vehicle.

The US mission to the red planet cost $US671 million, but at $US74 million India’s project came in at about 90 percent cheaper. Arguably MOM was intended more as a statement of intent than as a scientific mission, but it’s still hard not to raise an eyebrow at the comparative costs.

So, how was India able to successfully break into the interplanetary club at a fraction of the cost of more seasoned spacefarers? The answer lies partly in (significantly) cheaper labour costs, recycling components from previous missions and a willingness to take a risk on building just one spacecraft, rather than a series of prototypes.