The past two decades have seen a tremendous growth in innovation processes conceived under scarcity conditions with special focus on emerging markets and bottom of the pyramid (BOP) customers. However, evolving literature in this field has unfortunately resulted in a multitude of innovation approaches leading to terminology confusion and fragmented literature. Hence, this study is an attempt to systematically organize and synthesize the research on innovation approaches originated in, for or from emerging markets. An extensive systematic review of the existing literature is carried out to investigate the progress of prior research, and to use the insights to define future research pathways. This review is primarily based on the most frequently used innovation approaches, especially frugal innovation, jugaad, disruptive innovation, Gandhian innovation, catalytic innovation, indigenous innovation, bricolage, blowback innovation, trickle-up innovation, resource-constrained innovation, and BOP innovation. Our analysis finds growing standardization in terminology usage and increasing emphasis on “bottom-up” and structured innovation approaches. De-emphasizing the role of technology transfers and spillovers from the West, the findings exhibit increasing applications of these innovations beyond emerging markets to wider markets. Our research results also shed light on the evolution of the topic and instigate further research explorations in the direction of analyzing the user adoption of these constraint-based innovations and understanding the influence of new technological advancements, such as the Internet, mobile telecommunications, and Web 2.0 on the innovation process, with a special focus on the service industry.

A Systematic Literature Review of Constraint-Based Innovations: State of the Art and Future Perspectives

Frugal innovation: A review and research agenda

There is a need to develop an understanding of how frugal innovation promotes social sustainability. The objective of this paper is to find the connections between the two concepts of social sustainability and frugal innovation, by reviewing the existing literature concerning both fields. This paper presents a framework that identifies essential themes of social sustainability and explores them through frugal innovation. The framework builds on the important themes of social sustainability and shows their relevance in practice through frugal innovation. The notion of frugal innovation can be viewed as an approach towards realizing social sustainability and fulfilling the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/10/1034/pdf

How Frugal Innovation Promotes Social Sustainability

Frugal approach to innovation: State of the art and future perspectives

Mapping the frugal innovation phenomenon

Until recent times, Indian jugaad was commonly constructed to be a frugal form of innovation engendered from the lack of resources and unhealthy financial conditions, and has been recently imported...

Jugaad—From ‘Making Do’ and ‘Quick Fix’ to an Innovative, Sustainable and Low-Cost Survival Strategy at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Subject area




Non-governmental organization (NGO) intervention in poor communities using information and communication technology (ICT).




Study level/applicability




BBA, MBA courses on marketing management, social entrepreneurship, rural marketing, marketing to bottom of pyramid.




Case overview




In 2009, Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) along with Media Labs Asia and the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) established the Chanderi Weavers ICT Resource Centre (CWIRC) as a self-sufficient community information resource center involved in skills’ enhancement of weavers at Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh. The next three years of CWIRC resulted in an overall growth of the project with progress in the various domains of handloom industry through ICT-enabled development of weavers and weaving. The project not only aimed at the handloom industry revival and development, but also advanced in other sectors such as education, health and tourism. Osama Manzar, the DEF founder, is in a dilemma as to whether the local community of weavers in Chanderi would be able to continue with the sustainable ecosystem created in Chanderi. Is it the right time to exit Chanderi?




Expected learning outcomes




Issues related to the market development at the bottom of the pyramid; managing local communities and building their capabilities for marketing; marketing strategies of community marketing efforts; and key success factors for ensuring successful completion of any developmental project.




Supplementary materials




Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.




Subject code




CSS 8: Marketing.

Vaibhav Gupta

Papers

Jugaad—From ‘Making Do’ and ‘Quick Fix’ to an Innovative, Sustainable and Low-Cost Survival Strategy at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Digital Empowerment Foundation’s Chanderiyaan Project: linking the poor producers with the market using ICT