Navi Radjou

Navi Radjou is an independent scholar, an innovation and leadership advisor, an inspirational keynote speaker, and a bestselling author based in New York.

Building on his global bestseller Jugaad Innovation (over 200,000 copies sold worldwide), Navi has helped hundreds of companies and entrepreneurs unleash and harness the grassroots ingenuity of employees, customers, and partners to co-create simple but effective solutions that deliver greater socio-economic and ecological value using minimum resources.

Throughout the three decades of his international career—spanning the public sector to market research and then as an academic and author—Navi’s ideas have been shaped by his eclectic cultural background including his Indian roots, his French education, his cross-industry work experience in the US, Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Navi’s new book, "The Frugal Economy: Building a Better World with Less," published by Wiley and Thinkers50 in October 2024, chronicles the rise of a new multi-trillion-dollar economy fueled by 3 mega-trends—business-to-business (B2B) sharing, distributed manufacturing and hyper-local value chains, and regenerative business principles. Using +100 examples and proven best practices, this inspiring book shows business leaders how to reinvent their organization to thrive in the rapidly-emerging frugal economy.

Navi is also co-author of "From Smart To Wise: Acting and Leading With Wisdom," a book that shows how managers can hone their leadership skills to thrive in the age of smart AI and robots and lead purpose-driven organizations that appeal to Generations Y and Z workers. Navi’s other co-authored book "Frugal Innovation: How To Do More With Less" was published by The Economist with a foreword by Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever.

In 2013 Navi received the prestigious Thinkers50 Innovation Award—given to a management thinker who is reshaping the way we think about and practice innovation. In 2021, and again in 2023, Navi was listed by Thinkers50 as of the world's 50 most influential management thinkers.

Previously, Navi served as Executive Director of the Centre for India & Global Business at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. He was also a longtime VP/analyst at Forrester Research in Boston and San Francisco and advised senior executives worldwide on breakthrough growth strategies. Navi has consulted with leading international firms—including E&Y, GM, Fujitsu, IBM, Microsoft, P&G, SAP, and TCS. He has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

His work has been featured on NPR, BBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Financial Times, Fast Company, and the World Economic Forum’s Agenda. He has written for Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and strategy+business.

A widely sought-after inspirational keynote speaker, Navi has addressed audiences across the world in venues like the World Economic Forum, Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard, & MIT.

Born and raised in Pondicherry, India, Navi holds dual French-American citizenship. He studied at Ecole Centrale Paris and Yale School of Management. He lives in New York. He is a lifelong student of Yoga, Ayurveda, Qigong, and Buddhist (Vipassana) meditation.