This paper sheds light on two main concepts applied to innovation for development: frugal innovation and inclusive innovation. Researchers often conflate these concepts when classifying or characterizing innovative endeavours in developing contexts. We argue, however, that these concepts are fundamentally different based on their philosophical orientations or logics, i.e. frugality versus social inclusion, their respective innovation processes and outcomes. Based on an in-depth literature review, we develop a typology that outlines these differences. We show that an inclusive innovation lens accentuates the participation of marginalized actors and poverty reduction, while a frugal innovation lens highlights product design processes, business model innovation and resource use. Conceptual clarity on these differences has implications for how we characterize innovation in developing contexts in the academic, practitioner and policy spheres.

This paper focuses on the specific role of installers, a category of often overlooked diffusion intermediaries doing the actual implementation of energy transitions. We adopt an ecosystems perspective and aim to provide new knowledge on the installers' role in energy transitions, possible changes in this role, and the challenges installers face. Based on evidence from case studies in Gothenburg and Rotterdam, we first show how installers make or break energy transitions. They differ from other intermediaries in their long-term trust relations with customers, their deep contextual knowledge, and involvement in post-technology deployment. We unveil new nuances regarding downstream (installers deploy strategies to include budget-constrained customers in energy transitions) and upstream actors (installers face manufacturers' lock-ins and are trained by wholesalers and manufacturers). Secondly, we show challenges installers face caused by regulatory, market and technological dynamics in transitions, and identify new roles for them as IT-specialists, manufacturers and holistic advisors.

Frugal innovators creatively apply existing technologies to address local challenges, effectively reducing costs and optimizing performance. This approach is crucial in developing countries, providing cost-effective solutions to resource scarcity, especially for people experiencing poverty. However, research on the frugal innovation process, especially these innovators' motivations and the stakeholders' roles, remains limited. This article examines the frugal innovation process with a focus on two main aspects: (1) the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of Thai frugal innovators across the stages of idea generation, experimentation, and application, and (2) the roles played by stakeholders in these processes. Four cases of frugal innovation awarded by Ch. Karnchang Public Company are analyzed and categorized into three groups: non-commercial frugal innovation, commercialized frugal innovation as the primary income source, and commercialized frugal innovation as the supplementing income. Interviews with innovators reveal that motivations vary by commercial purposes and innovation stages. Intrinsic motivation is stronger during experimentation and application stages for non-commercial frugal innovation. In contrast, extrinsic motivation dominates in commercialized innovations. Additionally, stakeholder collaboration in fostering frugal innovation in Thailand is limited. These insights on motivations and stakeholder roles expand understanding of frugal innovation models.

Within wider debates on sustainability and digitalisation, frugal innovation (FI) scholars largely assume that digital technologies are important for FI in realising more sustainable outcomes. However, very few studies interrogate this causality. To tackle this challenge, we connect FI with digitalisation. Thereto, we conceptualise digital technologies as and within FIs and discuss three frugality dimensions to analyse three empirical case studies of digitally-enabled FIs. We use these cases to introduce new nuances on how digitalisation affects frugality and scaling. Our results unveil that digitalisation can increase frugality by enabling more accessible and affordable solutions through new flexible funding schemes and pay-as-you-go models. However, our evidence also implies decreasing frugality by an increase in end-user costs and digital exclusion. Likewise, increasing frugality through complexity reduction seems mainly to benefit intermediaries and frugal innovators themselves, whereas benefits of digitalisation in terms of complexity reduction for end-users seem to be limited. Digitalisation can even increase complexity for end-users, thus suggesting decreasing frugality. Finally, just like with non-digital innovations, scaling of digitally enabled innovations is dependent on the quality of logistical infrastructure and local adaptation practices. Moreover, scaling of digitally-enabled innovations is limited to users in regions with a proper ICT infrastructure.

This chapter sets the scene for the Handbook on Frugal Innovation. First, it describes the origins of the concept of frugal innovation and its emergence as an academic field of interest. Then, main drivers behind frugal innovation are explored. From the scholarly discussion on frugal innovation major themes are distilled that inform the structure and contents of the Handbook. The final part of the chapter presents the structure of the Handbook and the chapters of the Handbook are briefly introduced.

Small and medium size business enterprises (SMEs) are the linchpin in systems of food provisioning in sub-Saharan Africa. These businesses occupy the middle of the agri-food chain and face a food security conundrum: they must ensure that smallholder producers of limited means can operate under fair terms while low-income consumers are supplied with affordable and nutritious food. This task becomes even more challenging when resources are scarce. This paper explores how resource-constrained SMEs arrange the terms on which both farmers and consumers are included in agri-food chains. To this end, it combines the concept of inclusion with that of frugality. We use the case of a Kenyan SME to demonstrate how a focus on frugality can advance our understanding of how business practices create thriving business relationships with smallholders while simultaneously ensuring access to affordable food for consumers. We additionally identify what conditions for inclusion emerge from this type of dynamic business practices. Our perspective departs from assessing induced organisational interventions, such as contract farming or cooperatives, which deliberately shorten the agri-food chain, thereby overlooking the skilful practices being employed by business actors in the middle of the chain.

This paper investigates how a multinational enterprise (MNE) engages in frugal business model innovation to find the optimal balance between value creation and value capture in resource-constrained contexts in sub-Saharan Africa. Using qualitative content analysis, we analyse the case of Community Life Centres (CLC), a primary healthcare innovation developed by Royal Philips N.V., a multinational technology organisation headquartered in The Netherlands. Our findings show that an MNE can innovate by developing multiple iterations of the same business model-customising it to different geographical markets. Some aspects of the business model remain static, while others are dynamic. In this regard, the innovation process in a resource-constrained service sector is pegged on the financing model, and target markets are adjusted based on financial opportunities available, while the value proposition and costing mechanisms remain relatively static. This paper contributes new insights to the frugal innovation and business model innovation literature.

While legitimacy related to frugal innovation has not yet received much attention, in this chapter we argue that the concept is of key importance to this field. We identify three legitimacy challenges for frugal innovation: the possibly exploitative tendencies associated with the dominant role of MNCs in local informal communities; how frugal innovations are often seen as a stopgap instead of a structural solution; and the perception that frugal innovations are only second-rate substitutes. To explore these challenges, this chapter introduces three conceptual approaches towards legitimacy, originating from different disciplines, that offer ways to operationalize how legitimization processes may impact frugal innovations. It is shown how the different types of actors involved in frugal innovation processes may respond to the identified challenges. In the conclusion, the authors outline the foundations of a research agenda on legitimacy challenges related to frugal innovations.

This chapter focuses on one of the central concepts in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4th IR) - digital platforms - and its aim is twofold. First, the authors have used an extensive desktop research strategy to explore how digital platforms are used by top-down and bottom-up frugal innovators. The results show that retail platforms are used to trade frugal products and spare parts. Social media platforms offer videos and posts to increase awareness regarding frugal innovations. Funding platforms are important to bottom-up frugal innovators in search of funding for their innovation processes and avenues for bringing innovations to the market. The main finding on innovation platforms is that while these are primarily geared towards high-end innovations, they also contain examples of firms searching for frugal innovators as external partners, and of humanitarian aid agencies and MNEs to find frugal innovators partners to address ‘grand challenges’. Secondly, we identify follow-up research themes on frugal innovations and digital platforms, and launch a broader research agenda on frugal innovation in the era of the 4th IR.

This chapter starts from the recognition that we need to develop better ways to capture and measure Frugal innovation (FI). Through using data from a systematic literature review, we explore how FIs contain relatively differentiated characteristics from conventional innovations. We provide an overview regarding what are the specificities of FI, and how they might inform an effective way of capturing and measuring it. First, the key role of resource constraints in characterizing FIs, both because end users tend to be relatively poor, and because FIs are predominantly used in resource-constrained settings. Second, the diversity of actors involved in FI, considering the linkages and power inequalities across actors and the multiplicity of goals and motivations that steer their actions. We present recent attempts by other authors to measure FI, and a proposal to move forward with a selective and harmonized set of indicators that can be used to more effectively measure FI

Purpose Advance the state-of-the-art on how frugal innovation links to sustainability outcomes and based on content analysis of empirical publications in the field of frugal innovation, analyzing when and how FI is connected with social, environmental and economic outcomes. Design/methodology/approach Quantitative content analysis on empirical papers published on frugal innovation, using data visualization techniques to disclose relationships among the constructs adopted. Materials were collected following a step-wise methodology. In total, 130 articles were identified, read in depth and coded according to five main categories: context; development; implementation, adoption, diffusion; characteristics; and impacts. Findings The potential of frugal innovation to drive sustainability outcomes is influenced by the type of actors developing the innovation, regarding their organizational form (large firms, small firms, non-firm actors), their geographical origin (foreign or local) or motivations (mostly profit-motivated or socially-oriented). Collaboration plays a key role along the various stages of the frugal innovation cycle and is thus relevant for its potential to drive sustainability outcomes. The results reaffirm the need for greater attention to where and when sustainability-enhancing outcomes of frugal innovation are more likely to occur. Originality/value This study provides a qualitative study based on content analysis of empirical studies to explore the associations between frugal innovations and improved economic, environmental and social sustainability outcomes. The key novelty of this study lies in the systematic coding of each paper regarding the features of the innovation, the innovators, and the outcomes achieved. This allows taking stock of the evidence emerging in such a scattered literature, quantifying the extent to which insights take place in the empirical literature, looking for correlations, and highlight research gaps to understand to what extent frugal innovation can contribute to sustainable development.

This chapter examines the question under what conditions frugal innovations can be considered as a responsible innovations. Frugal innovations are (re)designed products, services or systems at substantially lower costs as compared to 'standard' products, services or systems but without sacrificing user value, aimed at markets in developing countries. A responsible innovation is an innovation in the development and production of which ethical and social elements have been taken into account. Besides affordability and technological achievability successful frugal innovations are characterised by scalability. These characteristics do not automatically resemble the ethical and social elements that characterise responsible innovations. The central question in this chapter is examined in terms of two phenomena, (1) social standards, and (2) inclusion of low-income consumers. The case of frugal weather stations is used as an illustration. The conclusions report that (1) an optimal level of social standard – and hence responsibility – exists, and (2) polycentric innovation – including low-income producers/entrepreneurs and consumers in the international value chain – is a way to make frugal innovations inclusive and hence responsible. The mechanisms are the reduction of (1) instability in the product development process and of (2) the unreliability of existing technological and institutional infrastructures.

Firms operating at the interface of global value chains (GVCs) and innovation systems (ISs) are expected to have better access to knowledge than their competitors, enabling them to learn at a faster pace. This article assesses if and how learning at the interface enables handicraft exporters in emerging economies to upgrade and deepen their capacities. Our conclusion from the analysis of three case studies is that craft exporters incrementally deepen their capacities, but only rarely upgrade. Quasi-hierarchical GVCs in combination with immature ISs are likely to lead to the selective deepening of capacities related to production processes, whereas relational GVC in combination with mature ISs may instead lead to the selective deepening of capacities related to products. The research findings also suggest that GVCs and ISs co-evolve in path-dependent processes. As a result, long periods of incrementally deepening the firms' capacities are intertwined with occasional spurts of discrete upgrading.

This article sets the scene for a special issue on why frugal innovations are increasingly important for development research. While the top-down business and management literature on frugal innovation has claimed developmental relevance, we give at least equal importance to much longer-standing bottom-up development studies discourses on grass-root innovation, bricolage, and livelihood strategies. We argue that we need both literatures for a better understanding of how frugal innovations relate to development. Accordingly, we position the articles in this special issue in the frugal innovation and development debate. Finally, we discuss the relevance of a frugal innovation lens in how two major global trends are impacting upon global development opportunities: the global diffusion of 3rd and 4th Industrial Revolution digital technologies and global population dynamics. We consider these two trends to be major entries for future research on frugal innovation and development.

RésuméLes initiatives privées participent à la gouvernance du travail au sein des chaînes de valeur mondiales, mais les travailleurs n'y jouent souvent qu'un rôle accessoire. Face à ce constat, les auteurs reprennent les thèses de Wright (2000) sur les conditions d'un «compromis de classe positif» et les appliquent à l'analyse du protocole sur la liberté syndicale signé dans le secteur du vêtement de sport en Indonésie. Ils concluent que les initiatives privées ne contribueront au travail décent que si elles s'appuient sur des syndicats locaux suffisamment puissants et si producteurs et acheteurs se trouvent dans une situation de dépendance effective vis‐à‐vis des travailleurs.

The growing concerns about food security, especially in the disadvantaged regions of the world, often point out the inadequacies of strictly sectoral approaches to addressing the problems of agriculture. Such policy approaches coincided with the rise of a global, top-down, formal, science-driven development of agriculture. Over time, such interventions have drawn criticism from multiple corners as inadequately addressing the need for local variation in institutional contexts. The objective of this paper is to adopt a bottom-up perspective to address the need for cross-sectorality in food security policies. Sustainable Rural Livelihood (SRL) and Grassroots Innovation (GI) are two well recognized schools of thought which emphasize the cross-sectoral approaches to livelihood and local level problem-solving. By embracing a frugality lens, we can offer a conceptual regularity in the patterns of behaviour and decision-making highlighted by the SRL and GI schools of thought. Taking a step further, the frugality lens, by focusing on the usefulness of a decision in the actual environment, emphasizes the need to diagnose local institutions better. Note, however, that the contention of the current paper is not to posit 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' as two competing paradigms. It only argues that a frugality lens helps us to better appreciate the strengths of a bottom-up approach for effective policy formulation, an appreciation of which would promote a dignified marriage between the two perspectives.