This pioneering Handbook details the origins of the concept of frugal innovation, its emergence as an academic field of interest, and the driving forces behind it. It presents new empirical evidence and critical perspectives on what frugal innovation entails, from a range of disciplines including science and engineering, humanities, and the social sciences.

This article presents data on companies' innovative behavior measured at the firm-level based on web scraped firm-level data derived from medium-high and high-technology companies in the European Union and the United Kingdom. The data are retrieved from individual company websites and contains in total data on 96,921 companies. The data provide information on various aspects of innovation, most significantly the research and development orientation of the company at the company and product level, the company's collaborative activities, company's products, and use of standards. In addition to the web scraped data, the dataset aggregates a variety firm-level indicators including patenting activities. In total, the dataset includes 21 variables with unique identifiers which enables connecting to other databases such as financial data.

Frugal innovation and related concepts are receiving increasing scholarly attention. While recent progress in the conceptualisation of frugal innovation as a phenomenon has been considerable, insights into the antecedents of frugal innovation remain relatively poor. We add to this literature by systematically conceptualising, theorising and empirically testing the relationship between resource constraints and the propensity of firms to produce frugal innovations, drawing on concepts of problemistic search and opportunity recognition. We distinguish two levels of resource constraints (firm-level and firm environment-level), and two types of frugal innovation (internally oriented and customer-oriented), while using managerial experience as a moderating internal factor. We find that firm-level resource constraints have a strong effect on the propensity of firms to engage in internally oriented frugal innovation, although only so for firms with experienced managers. This effect is lower when these firms operate in an environment that also faces high constraints. We find no effect of resource constraints on customer-oriented frugal innovations, but find a surprising negative moderating effect of managerial experience. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of these findings for the frugal and wider innovation literature. This study is the first large-scale empirical investigation of frugal innovation that estimates its prevalence. We find that frugal innovation is quite common when using the widest definition of frugal innovation. The majority of frugal innovations are mundane internal efficiency upgrades through capital investment.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the relationships between participants’ perceived benefits of sharing knowledge privately, within a group or with the general public within an organisational knowledge network. The quality and quantity of knowledge shared are explored in relation to the level of knowledge sharing visibility (both content and participants’ profiles). Design/methodology/approach: A research framework of perceived benefits of knowledge sharing is designed; survey and content analysis are used to explore influences of perceived benefits on the quantity and quality of knowledge shared by participants for each level of knowledge sharing within an organisation. The research model is empirically tested using a questionnaire survey with 205 participants and content analysis of their contributions in a high-tech corporate group. This study uses the partial least squares path-modelling method to explore relationships between constructs of the research model. Findings: The current research results show that intrinsic benefits are more influential than extrinsic benefits for private knowledge sharing, while extrinsic rewards play an important role at the public knowledge sharing within organisations. In addition, results indicate that both the quality and quantity of knowledge sharing at the group-level knowledge sharing are significantly higher than at the private and the public levels. Practical implications: Contemporary knowledge management systems are developed by integrating communication channels in different visibility levels of knowledge exchange. Managers of knowledge management systems are advised to use the research outcome for developing incentive strategies in different levels. Originality/value: In contrast to previous studies that focus on only one level of knowledge sharing, this paper explores relationships between perceived benefits of knowledge sharing with the quantity and quality of shared knowledge for three distinct levels of knowledge sharing.

Knowledge resources, mainly due to their causal ambiguity and inimitability, play a central role in shaping the competitive advantage of organizations. This chapter aims to illustrate a correspondence between knowledge types and organizational types in open innovation (OI) networks. It maps the knowledge types that shape diverse institutions of the economy as presented by the Triple Helix model: episteme at the academia, techne at the industry, and phronesis at the government. Each organization - beyond its institutional knowledge specialization - diversifies to incorporate the other two knowledge types in its knowledge integration portfolio. For example, a university may develop technologies and conduct responsible research and/or a firm may conduct scientific research and engage in corporate social responsibility activities. The implications of these institutional specialization and organizational diversification in OI networks are twofold: (a) organizations can gain a competitive edge by diversifying into a unique portfolio of knowledge integration encompassing a novel proportion of episteme, techne, and phronesis and (b) to achieve the highest level of knowledge integration, organizations belonging to diverse institutions can engage in inter-organizational knowledge sharing to meta-integrate their institutionally specialized and organizationally diversified knowledge types.

Organizations collaborate with external actors in order to acquire knowledge resources they cannot develop internally for economic and/or technical reasons. Mode 2 and Triple Helix models have examined the role of different organizational types in collaborative creation and knowledge use. This paper is an empirical investigation on whether universities differ from business-oriented or industrial organization types with regard to the extent of their knowledge collaborations. Using SEM methodology, it demonstrates the role of universities in knowledge collaboration through a survey of 472 organizations in the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development of the European Commission, Energy theme (FP7-Energy). In line with the Triple Helix model, universities are found to exhibit more extensive knowledge collaboration than businesses. Also, between-university collaborations are found to be more extensive knowledge collaboration relationship types than between-business relationships. The findings imply that (1) publically funded consortia should be aware that universities are more conducive and hence more effective in inter-organizational knowledge collaboration networks than other organizational types, particularly compared to for-profit business organizations. Universities should be included in these consortia. (2) Business organizations that do not have an extensive relationship with universities need to reconsider their partner portfolio and extend the knowledge collaboration of their network by connecting to more universities.(3) Policymakers should not only involve academic organizations but also include groups of more than one university per consortium to enable between-university knowledge collaboration to boost collaborative knowledge exploration and exploitation of the consortia.

This paper examines frugal innovations as processes, products and systems that affect the resource constraints that are typical for many developing countries. The focus is on the impacts of mobile phone technology-induced frugal innovations’ on the resource constraints and how these influence productivity, public services provision and inclusiveness. The effects are illustrated with the help of the case of the M-Pesa payment system and more specifically two particular services that use M-Pesa, i.e. Kilimo-Salama, an agricultural microinsurance through mobile phones and M-Farm, market access services for small farmers. The results reveal positive impacts on private sector productivity and public services provisions due to, among others, reduction of transaction length and hence costs. With regard to inclusiveness it is likely that in the short term the application of IT-induced frugal innovations will not be inclusive. In the longer term the inclusiveness of these innovations can be expected to increase.

This article explores which private moneys qualify as (disruptive) social innovations. A case study into 30 Dutch-based complementary currencies and cryptocurrencies was conducted to understand the functioning of different designs of private money systems as well as the motivations and objectives of involved social innovators. We conclude that private moneys generally can be qualified as social innovations but that their potential for disruptiveness is limited by design. It is the externalities that come with the public and network nature of monetary systems that are likely to impede disruption by private (digital) moneys.

Bringing value to end consumers is one of the main challenges for businesses in emerging markets. This paper examines the role of information technology (IT) advancements in frugal innovation and in influencing new business models to bring frugal innovations within reach of the poor. A thorough review of theoretical concepts of business models and their applicability to the Bottom-of-the-Pyramid (BoP) literature and frugal innovation is given. IT has three characteristics that have influenced both business models and frugal innovation. First IT reduces transaction costs, sensor prices have decreased, and IT's externalities have increased the economic and social value from one innovation. By discussing the case of a high-technology low cost weather sensor system deployed in sub-Saharan Africa, this paper demonstrates how IT has introduced new frugal innovations, and influenced new business models. The success of the weather station diffusion has been due to the value of the weather data generated, the adaptive business model, and the co-creation approach throughout the station and business model design. IT has played a strong part in diffusing new innovations in Africa, but also has the potential to exclude certain groups. Future research should explore how IT and frugal innovation can lead to inclusion.