Innovating in India – The Jugaad Principle

Last week I made my third trip to India and my first one with Verisign, visiting the company’s development center in Bangalore.

Paul Tidwell, who leads Verisign Labs’ program office, also joined me for the trip.

We had three full days of meetings with the center’s director Prashanth Honnavalli, his management team and staff on technology and innovation to learn about the many new ideas that our colleagues in Bangalore are pursuing as part of the company’s Registry and Network Intelligence and Availability businesses. We also shared thoughts on Verisign’s long-term technology direction.

One of the new things I learned from our colleagues in India is the principle of Jugaad, a Hindi term that means clever and resourceful. It describes the process of innovating by doing whatever it takes to get something working with minimal resources, often by using work-arounds.

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Verisign Celebrates Its 17th Anniversary

Yesterday was Verisign’s 17th anniversary. It was in1995, when Verisign was incorporated in Menlo Park, California, that saw the introduction of technologies that would shape the digital future.  From the popularization of the World Wide Web and the introduction of JavaScript to DVDs and digital cameras, new technologies that have shaped modern life seemed to spring up on an almost daily basis.

While still in its infancy in 1995, the world was waking up to the possibilities and promises that the Internet represented. The World Wide Web was starting to be discussed in households, businesses and schools; with almost 16 million users and 240,000 registered domains. But not everyone was sold on its staying power. 

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