Crafting Sustainable Development Solutions: Frugal Innovations of Grassroots Entrepreneurs

By Mario Pansera, Soumodip Sarkar. 2016

180 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A shift in the entrepreneurial landscape is taking place brought about by grassroots innovators with little formal education and technological knowhow, living and working in penurious environments. This research represents an emerging third wave of literature on Bottom of the Pyramid innovation, where products are offered for and by the underserved. Using primary and secondary data derived from four cases of grassroots entrepreneurs in the Indian Subcontinent, the study explores the phenomenon where resource scarce entrepreneurs craft solutions that are environmental friendly, with low overall ownership costs, and use locally available material. We argue that the grassroots phenomenon can be fruitfully exploited to achieve the new Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the UN as a post-2015 strategy for the future of global governance. These innovations might have a tremendous impact not only in terms of serving unmet and ignored consumer needs, but also longer term impacts through enhanced productivity, sustainability, poverty reduction and inclusion promotion.

Subfields: Business and International Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5bbe1de6eef07cae08507a96b23e598bf57f7469

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In Business and International Management

Citations in the corpus

The relationship between social entrepreneurship and sustainable development from economic growth perspective: 15 ‘RCEP’ countries (2021, background): “Pansera and Sarkar (2016) have selected the energy sector on the Indian subcontinent to explore four cases of grassroots frugal innovators, while testing the Entrepreneurship as Catalyst for Sustainable Development.”
How Frugal Innovation Promotes Social Sustainability (2016, background): “By seeing poor as producers [49], co-producers of innovation [50,51], entrepreneurs or innovators [52,53] and not mere receivers, the firms can be successful in the BOP markets.”
Entrepreneurship Education and Sustainable Development Goals: A literature Review and a Closer Look at Fragile States and Technology-Enabled Approaches (2019, background): “The Indian case cites a lack of experienced educators and systemic focus on EET as obstacles to entrepreneurial development in the country, while teachers in South Africa appear to discourage students from disadvantaged backgrounds from taking courses focused on critical thinking (e.g., math and sci”
Sustainability transitions in developing countries: Stocktaking, new contributions and a research agenda (2017, background): “Indeed, in the context of developing countries, innovation may often include less formalised ‘shop-floor’ based activities as has been expressed in concepts such as ‘frugal innovation', ‘grassroots innovation' and ‘inclusive innovation', which utilize local assets and involve indigenous knowledge sy”
Entrepreneurship as Catalyst for Sustainable Development: Opening the Black Box (2019, methodology): “The qualitative study was conducted by Pansera and Sarkar [36].”