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Grassroots innovations, developed by local people using locally available resources, have shown the potential to provide low-cost technological solutions to the problems faced by underserved consumers in the global south. This paper aims to link the concept of grassroots innovations to energy use in the context of India.

The paper takes three case studies from the list of technologies scouted and nurtured by the National Innovation Foundation to critically discuss the potential of grassroots innovations for the dissemination and diffusion of urban sustainable energy uses. The data for this study has been collected from various secondary sources. It discusses the opportunities and challenges in promoting grassroots innovations for sustainable energy uses in urban settings.

The paper discusses the opportunities and challenges in promoting grassroots innovations for sustainable energy uses in urban settings.

Although the concept and understanding of grassroots innovations have well developed, its linkages with sustainable energy use in urban settings have received scarce or no attention in the literature.

This study aims to integrate social embeddedness with learning society philosophy to explore how grassroots associations of Indigenous women tourism entrepreneurs can leverage their social network to co-create value.

A critical feminist perspective considers the intersectional experiences of Indigenous women tourism entrepreneurs from the rural Manasalu region of Nepal. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews with local tourism stakeholders were carried out. Hermeneutics in tandem with Indigenous methods of analysis ensured consideration of Indigenous ontologies and social locations beyond being merely theoretically driven.

A paradox of Indigenous women’s empowerment emerged where several efforts for empowerment presented themselves as a double-edged sword. Individuals’ social capital and social support for the sustenance and stability of grassroots associations ensure collective and continuous learning through a value-creation framework.

Collective self-reflection and self-determination for knowledge creation and sharing amongst social ties shed new light on the role of an Indigenous standpoint on value creation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that captures how the intersectionality of Indigenous women entrepreneurs in grassroots associations use their social capital through contesting, leveraging and learning to transform their social network into a value network.

Food-related innovations might contribute to a qualitative leap in the transition to sustainable food systems. In this article, the authors map the existing literature on food and innovation in order to identify and systematise major research streams and relate them to current discussions on sustainability. The authors rely on a broad definition of innovation covering specific technological innovations as well as social, environmental and system innovations.

The authors analysed the relationship between innovation and food through bibliometric and content analysis, augmented with visualisation based on data (N = 7,987) extracted from the Web of Science. The published volume, research areas and influential journals were investigated using descriptive analyses.

This review categorises the literature on innovation and food into six main clusters, showing that most of the studies are carried out at the macro-level related to the global sustainable food systems. Network visualisation allowed them to distribute recent keywords associated with innovation across the agri-food value chain. Moreover, the authors identified environmental, social and economic pillars of innovation, which not only relate to sustainability but also are associated with open innovation as well as social innovation and eco-innovation.

This bibliometric analysis is amongst the first to examine the holistic knowledge structure surrounding a triple concept of innovation, food and sustainability. In addition, the study identifies research gaps and indicates new research directions, which add further value.

This study aims to examine the dynamics of traditional wayang kulit or shadow puppet knowledge management in a community-based enterprise (CBE) known as “Wisata Wayang” in Wukirsari Village, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

A qualitative case study was adopted, which allows the author to explore the dynamics or uniqueness of an event or cultural phenomenon more deeply.

The shadow puppet is an artefact of Javanese culture with rich life philosophy and wisdom. It guides people the pursuit of harmony with themselves, others, the universe and God. The success of knowledge management of the shadow puppet at CBE was supported by the high entrepreneurial orientation of the administrators. This study showed that entrepreneurial orientation should be extended into sociopreneurial with additional aspects, including preservation mission and communality, promoting the emergence of grassroots innovations. The knowledge of shadow puppet craft in this village is passed through nyantrik, also known as apprenticeship.

No previous research has explored the dynamics of traditional knowledge management in the context of CBE in Indonesia. As Indonesia has rich traditional knowledge from hundreds of tribes and prominent communal cultures, this study of community-based knowledge management contributes new insights in the knowledge management literature.

This paper aims to provide a nuanced understanding of philosophies underpinning social innovation based on the action research strategies applied in the field.

Literature review was conducted to identify action research strategies referred to in the social innovation literature. Through stratified purposive sampling, the authors then selected nonprofit organizations, each closely associated with one of the strategies. Qualitative content analysis was applied to documents published by these organizations for an in-depth exploration of how the action research strategies frame the three dimensions of social innovation, namely, the product, process and empowerment dimensions.

The authors identified four broad action research strategies referred to in the social innovation literature. Each strategy inspires four distinct narratives of social innovation centered around key concepts: prototyping, evidence, asset-building and co-creation.

The methodology used is characterized by depth rather than scope. Although diverse types of documents were used, the documents are limited to publications by four institutions. A deductive approach using the categories should be used in future empirical research.

The paper contributes to the discussion about different schools and research agendas in the field of social innovation. In particular, the authors examine the action research strategies adopted in the field, shedding light on incompatible views and strategies within certain research clusters while identifying common ground between authors belonging to different schools.

The study aims to present a systematic literature review (SLR) to understand the current status of research on social media usage among the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). The purpose of this study is to identify the research gaps in this domain and review future research agendas by using theory, context, characteristics and methods [TCCM] framework.

An SLR, keywords co-occurrence and TCCM analysis were used to analyse and synthesize insights from 44 studies gained from Web of Science and Scopus databases.

The findings suggest that the USA and India are popular contexts for studying BOP. The BOP population uses social media to gain utilitarian, hedonic and social values. Further, social media can help BOP explore “entrepreneurship” opportunities, value co-creation and bring innovations.

This study expands the intellectual boundaries of social media at BOP and suggests multidisciplinary research. Additionally, adopting novel theoretical lenses helped determine social media's impact on BOP.

The learning outcomes are as follows: to strike a balance between business growth and keeping the core Gandhian philosophies intact; to evaluate the relevance of Gandhian philosophy in the age of the digital era, especially for the grassroots enterprises; and to identify the leadership characteristics demonstrated by Pabiben from the lens of servant-leadership theory.

The case describes the journey of a grassroots-based rural women entrepreneur, Pabibben, who had created an artisan's enterprise and rural business model based on Gandhian philosophies. The case focuses on whether Gandhian philosophies are still relevant in today's time for business growth. The case appeals to the academic fraternity, budding entrepreneurs, social sector start-ups and practitioners who believe in the inclusive and holistic growth of an individual, community, society and the nation.

The case is about the dilemma of how to grow a business ethically and balance economic and social gain. Pabiben used Gandhian philosophies as a set of values to make decisions and set policies for her business. Pabiben wanted to grow her business and expand her e-commerce portal “Pabiben.com” for other artisans to display, promote and sell their products to the global communities. She had to decide on the following:

1. Should she sell other artisans' products under “Pabiben.com”?

2. Should she allow other artisans to create their own identity on the portal and help the artisans' community grow?

3. Are Gandhian philosophies still relevant in today’s time for business growth?

The case can be used for both undergraduate and postgraduate students to teach entrepreneurship courses, especially social entrepreneurship and rural entrepreneurship. The case can also be used on the subject of corporate social responsibility, business ethics and women leadership. The case explains the concept of values/philosophies-based entrepreneurship and innovations.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of digital government innovation on transformational government. Digital government innovation is ordinarily implemented as means for the creation of public value. However, realisation of benefits from the digital government platforms has proved to be a challenge, and great discrepancy has been observed in the extent of public value generated, pointing to lack of innovativeness in resource-constrained environments. This research investigates the influence of digital government ambidexterity as an innovation strategy in enhancing transformational government (T-Gov). The authors develop hypotheses relating to digital government ambidexterity with two factors of innovation for enhancing T-Gov: exploitation incremental digital innovation and exploration radical digital innovation.

The hypotheses are tested using a sample size of 690 citizens interacting through digital government platforms. The authors identify exploitation incremental digital innovation and exploration radical digital innovation as factors, and how these factors of digital government ambidexterity influence information quality for public value creation. The success of T-Gov is associated to the implementation of digital government policy which moderate the relationship between digital government ambidexterity and information quality.

The empirical outcomes suggest that exploitation incremental digital innovation and exploration radical digital innovation positively influence information quality, thereby leading to public value, and this result become successful if there is implementation of digital government policy. Treating the two factors of digital government innovation as complementary leads to public value creation.

Limited time and funds to conduct a country comparative study. The study only focused on urban municipalities, of which it would be interesting to explore rural municipalities.

Adoption of MunINFORQUAL model for promoting digital government platform utilisation by citizens.

The utilisation of digital government platforms would improve citizens’ lives in a number of ways. For instance, citizen municipal interaction for service delivery and social benefits through instant notifications of developmental projects.

This paper contributes to the research literature on digital government innovation particularly from resource-constrained environments. Also, the study provides new empirical test using a data set of 690 citizens interacting through digital government platforms.