Within wider debates on sustainability and digitalisation, frugal innovation (FI) scholars largely assume that digital technologies are important for FI in realising more sustainable outcomes. However, very few studies interrogate this causality. To tackle this challenge, the authors connect FI with digitalisation by conceptualising digital technologies as and within FIs and discuss three frugality dimensions to analyse three empirical case studies of digitally-enabled FIs. These cases are used to introduce new nuances on how digitalisation affects frugality and scaling.
The results unveil that digitalisation can increase frugality by enabling more accessible and affordable solutions through new flexible funding schemes and pay-as-you-go models. However, the evidence also implies decreasing frugality by an increase in end-user costs and digital exclusion. Likewise, increasing frugality through complexity reduction seems mainly to benefit intermediaries and frugal innovators themselves, whereas benefits of digitalisation in terms of complexity reduction for end-users seem to be limited. Digitalisation can even increase complexity for end-users, thus suggesting decreasing frugality. Finally, just like with non-digital innovations, scaling of digitally enabled innovations is dependent on the quality of logistical infrastructure and local adaptation practices. Moreover, scaling of digitally-enabled innovations is limited to users in regions with a proper ICT infrastructure.
Journal Title: International Journal of Innovation Management
Publication date: 2024
Article title: Increasing or decreasing frugality: The connection between digitalization and frugal innovation
Authors: Van Tuijl, E., Intriago Zambrano, J. C., and Knorringa, P.
Cite this article as: Van Tuijl, E., Intriago Zambrano, J. C., and Knorringa, P. (2024), Increasing or decreasing frugality: The connection between digitalization and frugal innovation, International Journal of Innovation Management, https://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S1363919624500130
Keywords: Digitalisation, frugal innovation, digital platforms, Africa, sustainability, qualitative case studies.