Page 116 - The Resilient Organization

Resourceful, Robust, and Adaptive 103

of cutting costs by 10 percent, try solving the problem by cutting costs by
90 percent or more. This is what is currently happening in places like India
(see Prahalad, 2004). Of course, a technological innovation may also
change the resource constraints, such as the use of a hybrid engine in a car.
Sometimes the very act of resource-scarce innovation is also an act of
resilience: for example, using a shovel, a poor person’s only tool, as a fry-
ing pan at the end of the day. The poor person carefully cleans the shovel
1
and now uses it for cooking the evening meal. Or consider another exam-
ple, seen in Guguletu, a township near Cape Town, South Africa: residents
use old cola and beer cans to build temperature-resistant houses to shelter
people from heat and cold. In China, the repairers of Haier, China’s largest
appliance maker, discovered that small farmers used their washing
machines not only to launder clothes but also to clean vegetables. The
repairers relayed this user innovation to product managers, who in turn
asked engineers to install wider drain pipes that would not clog with soil
and grit. The manufacturer also affixed large stickers to the modified
machines with instructions on how to wash vegetables safely. By marketing
this innovation and others—including a washing machine optimized to
make goat’s milk cheese—Haier effectively spread a resourceful innovation
among entrepreneurial farmers in rural China. In the process, Haier also
won market leadership in China’s rural provinces (see Sull, 2005).

CONSTRAINTS SPARK CREATIVITY 2
Coauthored with Michael Gibbert and Martin Hoegl
Constraints, especially resource constraints (of which there are plenty in
an economic downturn), are key to innovation. Think of them as
boundaries that incite creativity. In fact, that is how many designers
work: the consensus is that the more the constraints, the better the
outcome!
Let’s step back in a time of heavy resource constraints and consider,
for instance, the Messerschmitt Kabinenrollers (cabin scooters), which
were developed by one Fritz Fend, an aircraft engineer, and produced in
the factory of the German aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt in the

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