A Development Lens to Frugal Innovation: Bringing Back Production and Technological Capabilities into the Discourse

Within a context of accumulated technological capabilities in the Global South and the re-emergence of industrial policy, this article seeks to reintroduce production and development in frugal innovation discussions, in the traditions of its antecedents. While frugality is commonly associated with appropriate technology, this paper identifies the less recognised roots of frugality in the technological capabilities literature that studied manufacturing firms in developing countries. Moving away from the dominant business and management-based enquiry, this paper advances a development lens to frugal innovation by deconstructing frugality as innovation for and under resource constraints. While innovation for resource constraints offers a path for enhancing individual capabilities through availability and access to frugal products, innovation under constraints contributes to firm-level capability. We argue that active policy interventions are needed to enable both these processes. Failing this, frugal innovation would continue to reproduce the status quo, offering a limited challenge to mainstream technological hegemony.