Las Organizaciones No Gubernamentales de cooperación internacional en España y su rol en proyectos de innovación frugal

Frugal innovation, as an innovation model, is an area of intervention that has been little studied in the framework of Non-Governmental Development Organisations (NGDOs). The aim of this research, through a multiple case study, is to identify and describe the level of knowledge that Spanish NGDOs have about frugal innovation, whether they have frugal innovation projects, which lines of action of Spanish international cooperation are most likely to work with frugal innovation models and what role they play in this type of project. The findings show that NGDOs stand out for their role as promoters and liaisons with the local target population and that they are not generally creators of innovation solutions. They are mostly unaware of the frugal innovation model at the conceptual level, although their projects contain a high proportion of frugal components, either partially or in full. In particular, for sustainable food production projects in rural areas, frugal innovation has great potential as an innovation model for development. It remains a challenge, in future research, to explore in depth the social impact produced by this type of highly frugal sustainable food production projects with respect to other innovation projects in the same field.