Frugal approach to innovation: State of the art and future perspectives

Frugal innovation has recently become a relevant topic in the public domain. The real challenge for frugal innovation is to introduce something new or different (innovating) whilst being sparing with resources (frugal). Traditionally, it has been investigated in relation to emerging and developing countries. However, scholars and institutions have pointed out that the phenomenon is growing in relevance in advanced economies too. As a consequence, some scholars have started soliciting attempts to systematize this emerging field of research. Based on these premises, the study aims to: explore how the frugal innovation concept has developed over the years; analyze the main key findings from the extant literature on frugal innovation to lay a foundation for subsequent works, by identifying gaps in current knowledge; highlight new directions for future research. In doing so, we carried out a systematic literature review (SLR) and analyzed 113 articles that have been published since 1990. We asked experts to validate the main research gaps we had identified through the SLR. As a whole, results show that experts identify - for both emerging and developing countries and for advanced economies - various relevant future research directions.