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To enhance the understanding of the moderating influence of different bottom of the pyramid (BOP) income segments on the antecedents of pro-poor innovation acceptance.

In this study, 320 BOP consumers with a range of low-to-moderate literacy and low-income levels were used as a convenience non-probability sample for undertaking quantitative analyses.

Only the influence of perceived usefulness on intention is moderated by income segments, such that the effect will be stronger for low-income BOP segment. Moreover, the influences of relative advantage, compatibility and observability on intention are moderated by income segments.

This empirical work has considerable private sector and public policy implications for companies and government designing/selling products for millions of poor people in developing and emerging economies.

This study contributes originally to knowledge in the subject area as there are very few studies that clearly and systematically analyse the key antecedents influencing the adoption intention of pro-poor technological innovations in the BOP market.

This paper aims to explore how visual comprehensibility of a product can affect innovation adoption among the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) consumers in Bangladesh.

This is an exploratory qualitative study based on interviews with eight managerial respondents involved in the design and marketing of innovative products targeted at BOP consumers in Bangladesh and three respondents who are consumers of these products.

One key finding from this research, in comparison to innovation adoption research in developed contexts, is the distinct importance that BOP consumers attach to visual cues in learning about and understanding a new product.

This research provides guidance for private and public sector organisations selling products and services to BOP consumers explaining the role of visual cues in generating better product comprehension. It also identifies the role of social relations in facilitating the adoption of new products within this segment.

By enhancing the adoption of so-called pro-poor innovations, this research can assist in bringing about positive social change and developmental benefits in this burgeoning segment of the market.

This is one of the first studies to consider innovation adoption of pro-poor innovations in BOP markets and one of the first studies to collect data on the role of visual comprehensibility for consumers in BOP markets.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a critical analysis of the innovation discourse, arguing that a more contextualised understanding of the challenges of innovation for development and poverty reduction in low-income economies will help the authors’ to unravel new development opportunities and provide alternatives to conventional capitalist paths to innovation.

The authors offer an integrative review of the literature addressing the topic of innovation emerging from within developing countries. Because existing innovation models are generally presented in ways that reflect practices and thought patterns inherent to the industrialised world, a literature review that offers an initial conceptualisation and synthesis of the literature to date on the theme of innovation from within developing countries provides for a more valuable contribution than a reconceptualization of existing models.

The paper highlights different narratives of innovation, how they emerge and what are their implications. The authors outline a research agenda for generating new knowledge about innovation capabilities in what is generally known as the developing world.

This paper shows that the recent evolution of the discourse of development is increasingly intertwined with elements that originated in other discursive worlds. The last three decades of innovation research have been characterised by a “cross-pollination” between different disciplines: development studies, science and technology studies, business management and organisation studies. By reviewing major research works conducted by scholars in these disciplines, this paper weds literature that heretofore have remained largely isolated from each other. The key innovation narratives that the study unveils – e.g. inclusive growth, bottom of the pyramid, grassroots innovation – address major questions of concern to these academic scholars around the political and socio-technical aspects that influence a firm’s capacity to innovate in the context of developing countries.

Advance the state-of-the-art on how frugal innovation links to sustainability outcomes and based on content analysis of empirical publications in the field of frugal innovation, analyzing when and how FI is connected with social, environmental and economic outcomes.

Quantitative content analysis on empirical papers published on frugal innovation, using data visualization techniques to disclose relationships among the constructs adopted. Materials were collected following a step-wise methodology. In total, 130 articles were identified, read in depth and coded according to five main categories: context; development; implementation, adoption, diffusion; characteristics; and impacts.

The potential of frugal innovation to drive sustainability outcomes is influenced by the type of actors developing the innovation, regarding their organizational form (large firms, small firms, non-firm actors), their geographical origin (foreign or local) or motivations (mostly profit-motivated or socially-oriented). Collaboration plays a key role along the various stages of the frugal innovation cycle and is thus relevant for its potential to drive sustainability outcomes. The results reaffirm the need for greater attention to where and when sustainability-enhancing outcomes of frugal innovation are more likely to occur.

This study provides a qualitative study based on content analysis of empirical studies to explore the associations between frugal innovations and improved economic, environmental and social sustainability outcomes. The key novelty of this study lies in the systematic coding of each paper regarding the features of the innovation, the innovators, and the outcomes achieved. This allows taking stock of the evidence emerging in such a scattered literature, quantifying the extent to which insights take place in the empirical literature, looking for correlations, and highlight research gaps to understand to what extent frugal innovation can contribute to sustainable development.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to stir the deliberation on understanding grassroots innovation (GI) phenomenon through the lived experience approach and attempt to address the existing void in current literature.

This paper outlines a human science research approach for studying the subjective reality embedded in the GI phenomenon. Such an approach provides a better and more bottom-up understanding of the underlying individual and interpersonal dynamics shaping the GI.

This study provides a richer understanding of the underlying individual and interpersonal dynamics shaping the GI phenomena. This may serve as an aid for future research on scaling, managing GI and developing entrepreneurial capabilities of the grassroots innovators (GIrs). The study also confirms that no single unilateral theory can fully explain the lived experiences of the GIrs at the ideation, opportunity recognition, prototyping and scaling stage of GI. Rather, it is quintessential to have an integrated holistic perspective for understanding GI. This study also highlights the importance of hermeneutic phenomenology in pro-poor innovation research and practice in the near future.

This paper’s main limitation is whether the findings can be generalized in a wider context. The authors acknowledge this limitation. However, the purpose of this study is not to generalize the findings but rather provide a contextual understanding of what constitutes the lived experiences of GI. The authors recommend that a future study covering greater number of GIrs across India be undertaken to gain a better appreciation of the bigger picture.

Systematic approaches for tapping into GI are conspicuously non-existent and hence a contextual understanding through the proposed holistic lens will assist in thriving of the GI phenomena in South Asian countries such as India.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the commercialisation mechanisms of the innovations that emerge from the informal sector of Indian economy. Also known as grassroots innovations, they are said to better fit with the local market demands and conditions in the developing nations of the world. The paper discusses the grassroots innovation ecosystem in India and the role that is played by the state in providing institutional support.

The paper is based on an exploratory study using both the primary and secondary sources of data. Primary data are taken from the interview of the innovators during the field work, whereas secondary data are acquired from research articles published in various journals indexed in Scopus and web of sciences, government publications and reports. The annual reports of National Innovation Foundation are analysed to gather information and to build the arguments for this paper. The secondary data are also collected and evaluated from the database of the grassroots innovators available on Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network.

The paper provides insight into how the grassroots innovations are commercialised in India through different pathways such as social entrepreneurship, technology transfer and open source technology. It takes four case studies to discuss the institutional support to the grassroots innovator and the challenges in the diffusion of the grassroots innovations.

Due to the chosen research approach, the results cannot be generalised on all grassroots innovations. Researchers are encouraged to conduct a survey of more grassroots innovations in order to derive generalised outputs.

The paper includes implications for understanding the diffusion process of grassroots innovations that can be useful for all the emerging and developing nations.

The paper fulfils an identified need to study the diffusion modes of informal sector innovations and management of grassroots innovations.

Disadvantaged regions in India suffer from various forms of problems aggravated by constraints of accessibility. This paper aims to conceptualize innovations as solutions to the problem at grassroots.

This paper tries to bridge empirical gaps in conceptualization of innovations at grassroots with the application of both empirical and theoretical methods.

Grassroots innovation is an important instrument to solve such problems in these regions, where appropriate solution is not developed by the government instrument or private agencies (market) in general with various forms of value creation.

This paper tries to bridge empirical gaps in conceptualization of innovations at grassroots.