Frugal innovation

About: Frugal innovation is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 472 publications have been published within this topic receiving 9290 citations.

Frugal innovation practices in start-ups : The case of a frugal medical device for BOP and middle markets in Indonesia

Abstract: This chapter explores how an Indonesian start-up, CTech Group, has developed a frugal cancer therapy for the base-of-pyramid and middle markets in Indonesia despite the local constrained environment. It aims to contribute the frugal innovation literature, and in particular, towards addressing the paucity of studies in healthcare. At CTech, the opportunity for a new cancer therapy device was discovered through the inventor’s identification of the inadequate and high-cost cancer therapies available in Indonesia. The main reasons are cost, complexity of usage, and poor integration into the local electrical grid. The prototype testing stage refers to the validation of the product design, benefits, and performance by testing an advanced physical version. The market testing of new products enables innovators to assess and refine the product performance and the related marketing plan in real settings with a larger group. Frugal innovators adjust the promotion and distribution strategies to include locally established channels and trustworthy networks.

Adding to The Innovation Taxonomy

Abstract: Innovation might be described in a number of categories: radical, disruptive, incremental, or, by type, product, process, and service innovation. Social and conceptual innovations are decidedly more abstract. In recent years, open and also frugal innovation have been defined. This essay suggests and contemplates four additional concepts. Mesovation is in between radical and incremental innovation. Exovation stands for systematic ways to reduce barriers to innovation. Metovations are novel methods or systems affecting conditions for innovation. Lastly, ynnovation would be cultural innovation.

Innovation in Africa: A View from the Peaks and Hilltops of a Spiky Continent

Abstract: In a widely read 2005 article in the Atlantic Monthly, author Richard Florida argued that with respect to innovation, the world is anything but flat. Given the way that creative talent, technical expertise, and financial capital tend to cluster in a handful of hubs or “peaks” around the world — places such as New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, and Tokyo — the world’s innovation topography is best described as “spiky” (Florida, 2005). Although Africa, to borrow Florida’s metaphor, has few innovation peaks of global significance and lots of valleys (and indeed, plenty of chasms), the continent does contain a growing number of hills, wherein entrepreneurs are profiting from latecomer advantages in technology to design new products, reengineer old ones, and launch bold new business models. African entrepreneurs and corporations have made particular inroads in sectors such as telecommunications and financial services, where firms like Safaricom and MTN Group are world leaders in mobile money. But they have also achieved success in manufacturing, consumer goods, and agriculture (Juma, 2011; Ware, 2013).

Implementing Frugal Innovation: Leveraging Constraints as Opportunities for Electric Rickshaws in India

Abstract: Companies can address resource constraints and environmental problems with technological innovation. This chapter focuses on the disruption of public transportation with battery-operated electric three-wheelers in the emerging market of India. Electric rickshaws have gained and continue to gain much popularity as alternative transportation in this market. The first part discusses what defines these vehicles as frugal innovations. They are a comfortable and economic mode of transport compared to vehicles with traditional combustion engines. Electric rickshaws disrupt transportation by automotive rickshaws and cars with traditional combustion engines and also offer a sustainable solution to environmental problems. Based on this foundation, the next part presents and applies a conceptual model on constraints and diffusion of frugal innovations. This section further illustrates specific affordability and resource constraints and ways of overcoming them in order to help the diffusion of electric rickshaws. The final section concludes and discusses further research opportunities for market disruptions with frugal innovations.

Open global innovation networks as enablers of frugal innovation: propositions based on evidence from India

Abstract: Recent years have seen the emergence of low-cost innovations targeted at economically weaker sections of the society, seeking to align business with social welfare. In many instances, results on the ground have been, however, rather sobering as firms have generally (probably justifiably) worried that 'good quality, low price' products may cannibalize into their regular business. At the same time those very customers that were intended to benefit from the new approach have tended to shy away fearing low quality and social stigma of using cheap products. Using multiple case studies of successful affordability-driven innovations ('frugal innovations') from India we investigate how firms can effectively reduce market and technology uncertainty of product innovations targeted at price-sensitive customers. The key criteria to success seem to lie in reducing the overall cost of ownership and enhancing customer perception of quality and image. The case studies reveal that affordability-driven innovations are especially successful when firms seek recourse to open global innovation networks (OGINs) for collaborative development in all phases of the innovation value chain.