Capturing Frugal Innovation

Frugal innovation is emerging as a new promising avenue to address global issues such as poverty, resource depletion, and climate change, and to arrive at global sustainable and human development. Frugal innovations aim ‘to do more and better with less’. While frugal innovation is presented by ‘innovation gurus’ as the way to go forward, many questions remain on what frugal innovation implies for our thinking models on the purpose of innovation and the role of (low and high) technology in society, how these can be used and applied, and what this implies for innovation systems and management, entrepreneurship and business models, economic growth and transformation, and human and sustainable development. The Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa (CFIA) – one of the leading research centres on frugal innovation in Europe and beyond – currently works on a Handbook (an edited volume to be published with Edward Elgar Publishing) that further explores and investigates these questions and which also aims to present a cohesive, multidisciplinary research agenda on frugal innovation for the near future.

The workshop ‘Capturing Frugal Innovation: Towards a Handbook on the crossroads of technology, entrepreneurship and global sustainable development’ will bring together authors contributing to the Handbook, as well as other key participants in the frugal innovation debate. The workshop has three aims. Firstly, for authors to peer review each other’s Handbook contributions. Secondly, to stimulate cross-fertilization among authors from various disciplinary backgrounds. Thirdly, to produce an ambitious future research agenda on frugal innovation, laying foundations for more systematic multidisciplinary collaborative research initiatives.