A provocative strategic guide for business leaders and policymakers. Answering the questions:
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Every technological revolution has two phases: the first defined by capability, the second by architecture. The first phase of AI—defined by massive scale, cheap capital, and abundant compute—is closing. Frugal AI argues that the defining challenge of the era which is upon us isn’t that of creating greater and greater machine intelligence, but its integration and absorption.
Serish Gandikota demonstrates why AI systems that appear powerful in pilots so often fail when they encounter the real-world of institutional budgets, energy limits, and regulatory pressure.
In fact, “constraints-first” architecture is the right design-brief for all AI, because that is what shows how to extract greatest possible performance per unit of capital and per unit of energy.
Here is essential reading for any leader who wants to move from “AI experimentation” to “national infrastructure” or at least “organisational infrastructure.”
Serish Gandikota has pioneered practice and research at the intersection of AI and institutional strategy – for example, as the co-founder and co-lead of the Frugal AI Hub at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School. With over a decade of experience in frugal innovation across healthcare, finance, and public systems in the USA, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and India, his work focuses on bridging the gap between technical capability and organisational realities.
In aerospace and defence, we learn early that the price of acquiring a capability tells you almost nothing about the cost of sustaining it. Serish Gandikota brings that discipline to artificial intelligence with unusual clarity in Frugal AI. He treats deployment as an engineering and institutional problem rather than a procurement event, and in doing so asks the question every board will eventually have to answer: can we actually hold this together? – Dr Vivek Lall, CEO, General Atomics Global Corporation
It is amazing to see the principles of frugal innovation carried into the age of artificial intelligence in this compelling book on Frugal AI. By treating constraint as a design strength and focusing on deployment in real institutional settings, the book offers a clear and practical blueprint for building AI systems that are efficient, resilient and genuinely inclusive. – Professor Jaideep Prabhu, Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise, Professor of Marketing, and Director of the Centre for India and Global Business, Cambridge Judge Business School; co-author of Frugal Innovation.
An important book that addresses the highly discussed topic of AI from a completely new and highly pragmatic angle. It articulates what engineers and executives in manufacturing firms have witnessed firsthand; that model or human capability was never the binding constraint on AI transformation, institutional absorption was. The frameworks proposed in the book, such as the “Frugal Stack” and the “Sufficiency Test”, give this insight the discipline of methods; one which every industrial AI initiative should be made to satisfy before it reaches the shopfloor. – Dr. Stephanie Knizkov, Head of Digital Transformation Steering at Fortune 100 Automotive OEM
Plurality does not need one superintelligent centre of gravity; it needs millions of bounded, accountable systems that institutions can actually hold. Frugal AI shows, with rare operational honesty—down to the 8,000-rupee handset that is actually in use—how that holding is done. A design philosophy for keeping judgment where it belongs: with the people closest to the consequences. – Audrey Tang, Cyber Ambassador of Taiwan; former Digital Minister and co-author of Plurality.
AI will only live up to its promise if it is used – and used in ways that benefit the world as a whole. This exciting book explores the lessons of frugal innovation for AI, bringing those rich insights to the current technological moment. – Professor Dame Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy and Research Director, Bennett School of Public Policy, University of Cambridge.
Technology for the most part only amplifies human and institutional forces, and Frugal AI shows what this means for artificial intelligence: for organizations to see durable value from AI, they need not only the technology, but the ability to absorb, govern and sustain it. A timely and important book! – Kentaro Toyama, W. K. Kellogg Professor of Community Information and Professor of Information, University of Michigan School of Information; author of Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology.
As the world continues to grapple with the escalating costs and steep resource demands of technology, Serish Gandikota offers an empowering and practicable framework for making AI more frugal, more sustainable and ultimately, more ethical. – Professor Sun Sun Lim, Singapore Management University, author of Humanising Technology: Reflections on Design, Ethics and Inclusion
As is the case with every revolutionary technology, society will shape the direction taken by artificial intelligence. This book is a bold and serious effort at connecting the most powerful technology at hand with the most urgent challenge facing humanity. A must read! – Carlota Perez, Author of Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages
Frugal AI reminds us that the best innovations aren’t the ones designed for ideal conditions—they’re often the ones designed to succeed under real ones. Instead of asking, “What can AI do?” Serish asks whether AI is designed for the people, institutions, and environments it is meant to serve. In treating real-world constraints as opportunities for better design, he offers a holistic framework for creating AI that is more resilient, more inclusive, and ultimately more impactful. – Deepa Prahalad, Co-author of Predictable Magic: Unleash the Power of Design Strategy to Transform Your Business.
This book arrives at a time when many organisations feel stuck. AI can do so much, yet they struggle to encourage their staff to use it to its full potential. Or so they believe. Too often, implementation begins before the most basic questions have been asked: What do we actually need? And do we need AI at all for the specific task at hand? Serish Gandikota, a pioneer of frugal innovation, offers practical tools for approaching AI in a smart way, while challenging the widespread misconception that frugality is about cutting costs. It is not. It values simplicity as a design principle that increases robustness and ease of use. As Serish puts it, “Cheapness lowers standards; frugality raises them.” Companies that truly want to make the most of AI would do well to take this to heart. This book is a wonderful starting point. – Liza Wohlfart, Head of the Center for Frugal Products and Manufacturing Systems at Fraunhofer Stuttgart, Germany
Anyone who has worked through large vendor and technology transformations knows the model or platform is rarely the hard part. Governance, orchestration and cost discipline are. This puts it into a robust framework, and the Absorption Gap does well to consider the broader organisational operating model, not just the technology sitting on top of it. A genuinely useful diagnostic for anyone responsible for making these decisions. – Ravi Bhalla, Director of Strategy and AI, M&G
The initial frenzy around AI is subsiding, and business owners are now asking the harder question: what does adoption really cost, and what does it really return? How does AI build resilience and efficiency? How do you move from adopting AI to embedding it without killing the golden goose? And how do global south businesses build AI systems right-sized for their realities, without the budgets of their deep-pocketed northern counterparts? Serish explores this and more with clarity, practical case-studies, and hard-won experience. – ‘Tokunboh Ishmael, Co-founder & Managing Director of Alitheia Capital
At a time when AI discourse centres on wowing the public with new frontier model capabilities, Frugal AI offers a refreshing shift in perspective. Drawing on examples from public services, agriculture, and resource-constrained environments, Serish Gandikota shifts the conversation from model capability to the harder challenges of deployment, governance, and institutional readiness. The result is a compelling framework for confronting the complexities of how AI might be absorbed into organisations and a valuable guide for leaders, policymakers, and practitioners navigating the deployment era of AI. – Dr Jacki O’Neill, Director of Microsoft Research Africa
Serish Gandikota’s insightful book brings an important message at exactly the right time. The obsession with the power of LLMs, a field where only a few can play, is giving way to the need to understand how AI can be most effectively used. As Gandikota points out, this is not only a question of deployment but of absorption, the institutional capacity to find the right fit for an organisation’s specific needs, a managerial gap that is clear in both business and government. His book is excellent reading for companies that want to understand how to reap the benefits of AI in the most resource-efficient way. – Sean Randolph, Senior Director, Bay Area Council Economic Institute
Across Africa, I have seen successive waves of technology arrive with the promise of transformation. Serish Gandikota’s distinction between adoption and absorption therefore resonates deeply. With AI, the challenge is not simply to adopt another technology, but to build the capacity to own, shape, govern and sustain AI. Frugal AI asks the more important question: not who uses AI, but who has the capacity to determine how it is used. – Parminder Vir OBE
The real test of AI is not just what the technology can do, but how well it can work in the real world and change people’s lives for the better. Serish Gandikota’s Frugal AI is an important and timely contribution to the conversation about how we turn the promise of AI into meaningful impact. – Sonia Singh, Founder & CEO, SSA India; author of Defining India: Through Their Eyes.
This remarkable book shows how organizations and nations can unlock and harness AI’s full socio-economic potential without breaking the bank. Serish Gandikota outlines a frugal and robust design philosophy for implementing AI strategically in businesses and public institutions so they can maximize impact and minimize waste. The winners in the 21st century will not be institutions that invest in ‘bigger and better’ AI models but the ones that invest in the right organizational capabilities to absorb AI’s transformative power effectively. All CEOs and policymakers should read this seminal guidebook to learn how to master AI adoption cost-effectively and achieve durable benefits. – Navi Radjou, Thinkers50-ranked management expert and co-author of Frugal Innovation.
Manuscript Status: Completed October 2026.
Rights Available: World/ All Languages – contact: Rob Wendover, 07775 807930, rob@prologuesales.com