Victor hugo once said that "nothing can stop an idea whose time has come". He failed to add that a lousy product launch can delay it. In the first decade of this century it seemed that frugal innovation's time had indeed arrived: to meet surging demand from new consumers in emerging economies, innovative firms in those countries were stripping products of their fripperies and cutting their cost drastically. The new world had at last produced a big, new management idea. Then along came the Tata Nano. The $2,000 car bore the imprimatur of one of the emerging world's best companies. But some of the earliest Nanos burst into flames. Although Tata Motors fixed its engineering problems, aspirational Indians made it clear that they did not want to be seen driving "the world's cheapest car". Frugal innovation looked as if it might go from promising to passe without having made any impact.
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