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This study aims to understand why young people are interested in buying frugal innovations.

Data were collected with a survey administered to 534 university students enrolled in various fields of study (e.g. sciences, technology, economics and fine arts). Using the Tata Nano car as an example of frugal innovation, a model based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology was developed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The model’s results reveal that effort expectancy, performance expectancy and facilitating conditions are critical factors that explain university students’ intention to buy Tata Nano.

Although frugal innovations are often introduced first in developing countries, frugal innovations could be highly relevant to users in developed nations as these innovations can provide market opportunities in terms of cost-conscious, relatively low-income and sustainability-conscious consumers.

Given the importance of frugal innovation for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in developing countries, this study aims to explore the role of IT resources on frugal innovation through the mediating roles of knowledge sources and to what extent the relationship between sources of knowledge and frugal innovation is strengthened or weakened under the moderating effects of market turbulence.

This is an empirical study. Data were gathered from 355 SME employees of Pakistan through a questionnaire survey; the variance-based PLS-SEM approach was used to analyze the data.

Findings reveal the significant impacts of IT resources on different aspects of frugal innovation, namely, frugal functionality (FF), frugal cost (FC) and frugal ecosystem (FE). Moreover, the paper highlights the mediating roles of sources of knowledge in the relationship between IT resources and frugal innovation in frugal functionality and frugal cost. Findings also revealed that the moderation of market turbulence strengthens the effects of sources of knowledge on frugal functionality and ecosystem, but surprisingly weakens the relationship between sources of knowledge and frugal cost.

To bring a deeper understanding of the significant role of IT and knowledge sources, future research should examine the potential moderating role of environmental factors or perceived organizational support or mediating role of knowledge management processes in the relationship between IT resources and frugal innovation.

The paper provides a valuable understanding and novel approach for directors of SMEs in developing countries to improve their frugal innovation capability through IT and knowledge resources.

This study contributes to bridging research gaps in the literature and advances how IT resources, directly and indirectly, help firms improve frugal innovation capability via mediating roles of sources of knowledge.

The paper aims to address two key gaps in the literature of frugal innovation. First, it disambiguates frugal innovations into its types, and into the various levels at which it happens. Second, it builds upon the theoretical foundations of resource-based view, new institutional economics, economics of location, and institutional theory to offer testable propositions on determinants of frugal innovations.

This is a conceptual paper. The authors first systematically reviewed the extant literature on frugal innovation and related domains and categorized the existing understanding on the domain into various typologies of frugal innovation. The authors then justified why certain key theoretical lenses are tenable to understand the determinants of frugal innovation and then examined the conditions that enable such innovations.

The paper has three key findings. First, frugal innovation comprises of a frugal mindset, a frugal process and a frugal outcome, which may be practiced distinctly. Second, frugal innovators are of three types: grassroots-level, domestic-enterprise level, and MNC-subsidiary level. Each has their distinctive incentives and styles of frugal innovation. Third, a frugal mindset is encouraged by a resource-scarce environments, weaker institutional intermediaries, and a higher tolerance for uncertainty. Frugal processes are espoused by poor property rights regime and a critical size of lead market; and frugal outcomes are influenced by the network-position of innovators, and the presence of critical lead-markets.

The propositions are though testable, but proxies need to be developed to measure the variables, such as a frugal mindset, and a frugal process. Further, the current view on various types and levels of frugal innovation is that of mutual exclusivity, whereas this may not always be the case. Hence, it might be useful to identify contingencies in which these distinctions fade away.

The paper is valuable in two key aspects. First, it offers a much-needed theoretical underpinning to the phenomenon of frugal innovation, such that the phenomenon could be better understood and influenced. Second, it nuances the phenomenon by identifying distinct types of frugal innovators in terms of their motivation, institutional influences, and styles of innovation.

This study aims to analyze the effect of external and internal sources of knowledge on frugal innovation. Moreover, it investigated how this relationship is weakened/strengthened by the moderation of innovation capabilities.

This empirical study’s data were taken from 288 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by using a questionnaire survey. To analyze this data, analysis of a moment structures software (AMOS) was used. Structural equation modeling was conducted to test the hypothesis and the slope test investigated moderation.

The study results showed the significant effect of internal and external sources of knowledge on frugal innovation. Moreover, the results highlighted that the moderating role of innovation capabilities strengthens this relationship.

The SMEs of “Saudi Arabia” were considered for this study. Among these, this paper only focused on enterprises owned by Saudi citizens. Moreover, the data were collected from 288 SMEs. Therefore, future studies can be conducted from any other country with larger sample size. This study has used moderation of innovation capabilities and future studies can use information credibility as a moderating variable.

Previously, many studies have highlighted the importance of knowledge for innovation, but the effects of knowledge sources from the perspective of SMEs and emerging markets remain unexplained. Very limited studies have explored the relation of knowledge sources with frugal innovation. This study first examines the moderating role of innovation capabilities between “internal and external knowledge sources” and frugal innovation. Moreover, this research reveals the SMEs of Saudi Arabia and its sector of frugal products.

Given innovation's significance, this research examines the link between empowered leadership and frugal innovation. The research also explores how collaborative cultures and organizational commitment mediate empowered leadership's effect on frugal innovation.

Quantitative method is used with the approach of hierarchical regression to test the hypotheses with data obtained from Pakistani small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the questionnaire from 288 participants.

The results of this study show that empowered leadership has a considerable impact on the firm's capacity for frugal innovation. Additionally, this study shows that organizational commitment and collaborative culture significantly moderate the association between empowering leadership and frugal innovation.

Future studies should examine mediating factors, including employment experience, education and perceived organizational support, and moderating variables like employee psychological empowerment and leadership styles.

This research advises SMEs in developing nations to utilize frugal innovation since they cannot afford to spend extensively on technologies that add creativity and innovation to goods and services.

This study advances how leadership both directly and indirectly helps organizations strengthen their capacity for frugal innovation through the mediating roles of collaborative culture and organizational commitment.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of transformational leadership (TL) on firm's frugal innovation. It also deepens understanding of appropriate mechanisms and conditions to improve specific aspects of frugal innovation namely frugal functionality, frugal cost and frugal ecosystem by examining the mediating role of knowledge management capability (KMC) and moderating mechanism of collaborative culture.

The paper utilized structural equation modeling and cross-sectional design to test hypotheses in the proposed research model using data collected from 351 participants in 112 Vietnamese firms.

The findings indicate that KMC significantly mediates TL's effects on aspects of firm's frugal innovation namely frugal functionality, frugal cost and frugal ecosystem. In addition, the influence of KMC on frugal functionality is different and depended on the extent of collaborative culture in an organization.

The paper has significantly contributed to increasing the understanding of the link between TL and specific aspects of frugal innovation by highlighting the important role of KMC and positive effects of collaborative climate in an organization.

The paper is unique in the attempts to provide the valuable initiatives and integration view of leadership practices for improving specific dimensions of frugal innovation of firms in developing and emerging market.

The present study aims to examine the relationships between digital business transformation, organizational learning, frugal innovation and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) resilience in emerging markets.

Empirical data collection has been implemented using a questionnaire method from 214 owners and managers of SMEs. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach was used to examine the measurement model and test hypotheses.

The results show that digital business transformation significantly impacts frugal innovation and SMEs' resilience in emerging markets. They also confirm the significant impact of frugal innovation on SMEs' resilience. Furthermore, the results revealed that organizational learning significantly impacts digital business transformation, frugal innovation and SMEs' resilience.

This study provides novel insights into the existing theories and literature regarding the determinants of SMEs' resilience in emerging markets. It also provides practical contributions, confirming the SMEs' need to develop their dynamic capabilities, including digital transformation, frugal innovation and organizational learning to maintain their resilience.

This paper aims to propose a framework for the dimensions of frugal innovation enablers in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

A mixed research approach has been applied. First, by a comprehensive literature review, the most important factors influencing frugal innovation have been identified. Then, an interview has been conducted with 18 experts who were selected by snowball sampling method. In the next step, all identified variables have been modified in a questionnaire with 48 factors, which were distributed to 200 employees and managers of SMEs in the home appliance manufacturing industry of Isfahan province, who were selected by non-random sampling. Data has been analyzed using SPSS-25 software for exploratory factor analysis.

Findings indicated that the most important enablers of frugal innovation are world-class design, human aspect, marketing, support, knowledge, social aspect, prototyping, cultural aspect, environmental aspect, distinct brand creation, core functions focus, local R&D, cost-cutting business model and low-cost production.

The proposed framework provides an effective basis to managers and decision-makers in the field of frugal innovation to evaluate their capabilities in implementing frugal innovation, the results of which are helpful in developing a roadmap for achieving frugal innovation in SMEs and particularly in home appliance manufacturing companies.

The comprehensive framework of this study has not been applied, developed or studied in the literature. The proposed framework provides new insights for future studies on the subject of frugal innovation, e.g. investigating the influence of frugal innovation on frugal innovation performance.

Given the important role of frugal innovation for firms in the developing and emerging countries, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of transformational leadership (TL) on frugal innovation through the mediating roles of tacit and explicit knowledge sharing.

The paper used a quantitative research method and structural equation modeling to test the relationship among the latent factors based on a sample of 339 participants from 120 Vietnamese firms.

Findings reveal the significant impacts of TL on aspects of frugal innovation, namely, frugal functionality, frugal cost and frugal ecosystem. Moreover, the paper highlights the mediating roles of tacit and explicit knowledge sharing (KS) in the relationship between TL and frugal innovation in terms of frugal functionality and frugal cost.

To bring a deeper understanding of the benefits and important role of knowledge resources, future research should investigate the potential mediating mechanisms of knowledge management processes in the relationship between specific leadership styles and frugal innovation.

The paper provides a valuable understanding and novel approach for managers and directors of firms in developing and emerging countries to improve their firms’ frugal innovation capability through leadership practice and knowledge resources.

This study contributes to bridging research gaps in the literature and advances the insights of how TL directly and indirectly fosters frugal innovation via mediating roles of tacit and explicit KS.

The COVID-19 crisis has created enormous strain in global supply chains. The disruption has caused severe shortages of critical items, including personal protective equipment (e.g. face masks), ventilators and diagnostics. The failure of the industry to meet the sudden demand for these necessary items has caused a severe humanitarian crisis. These situations, resulting from the COVID-19, crisis have led to the informal growth of frugal innovation in sustainable global supply chains. This paper aims to provide a detailed overview of drivers of frugal-oriented sustainable global supply chains, following lessons acquired from emerging countries’ attempts to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors used a focused group approach to identify the drivers and this paper further validated them using existing literature published in international peer-reviewed journals and reports. The authors adopted total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to analyze the complex relationships among identified drivers.

The authors present a theoretical framework to explain how the drivers are interlinked. This paper has developed the framework through a synthesis of the TISM modeling and Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment analysis. This paper observed that government financial support, policies and regulations, under the mediating effect of leadership and the moderating effect of national culture and international rules and regulations, has a significant effect on the adoption of emerging technology, volunteering initiatives and values and ethics. Further, emerging technology, volunteering initiative and values and ethics have a significant effect on supply chain talent and frugal engineering. These results provide some useful theoretical insights that may help in further investigating the role of frugal innovations in other contexts.

The authors find that outcomes of the methodical contributions and the resulting managerial insights can be categorized into four levels. Industry and researchers alike can use the study to develop the decision-support systems guiding frugal-oriented sustainable global supply chains amid the COVID-19 pandemic and in recovering them thereafter. Suggestions for future research directions are offered and discussed.