Manifestations and Measures of Frugal Innovations

Abstract

In the opinion of many researchers, frugal innovations are often connected with sustainable development. This statement is proved by literature analysis, where frugality and frugal innovations are presented as a determinant of sustainable development. However, in most of the cases the lack of empirical evidence of this situation can be noticed. The article includes a review of the literature describing frugal innovation. In the article, the definitions of frugal innovations are compared with some empirical propositions for frugality measuring in the companies. The aim of the paper is to describe the issue of frugal innovation, its definitions, manifestations and ways of measuring. The reason of conducting the study is a desire of verification how deep is the issue analysed in the literature. In order to achieve the aim of the paper, the following objectives have been set: (1) to discuss current definitions of frugal innovations; (2) to present the ways how frugal innovations can be manifested; (3) to describe current propositions of frugal innovation measures and to discuss if can they be used to measure frugal innovation efficiency in the companies. The analysis is based on literature review. First of all, there is presented the method of the study and detailed description of the research sampling process. Presentation of frugal innovation definitions is the second step  of the study. The next step is to show the most common manifestations of frugal innovations. Considerations about these two elements are the causes of identifying the measures, which helps to assess the efficiency of frugal innovations. The study confirms that there is still a huge demand  for deeper investigation of the issue, because the current literature does not provide the comprehensive understanding of it. Paper type: systematic literature review.