Understanding frugal innovation strategies

Market globalization, the rapid growth of emerging countries, the challenge of sustainable product and service design, and the needs of low-income populations are all challenges that are prompting companies to seek new forms of organization and innovation to meet them. Current research focuses on frugal innovation as a possible response to these challenges.

Frugal innovation is defined as the search for savings in use and expenditure throughout a product's life cycle. It involves simplifying a product's functionalities to meet an essential end-user need, while reducing costs. Originally developed in developing countries, the concept of frugality has now been adopted by many Western companies as part of their sustainable development approach.

This fact sheet highlights the key principles underlying the design of frugal products. Without being a methodology in the strict sense of the word, it will help you to better grasp the concept of frugal innovation, thanks to a few examples and a focus on :

• the central aspect of the users, uses and socio-technical environments that define the frugality of the new product;

• the importance of thinking frugal innovation in terms of both the end product and its manufacturing process;

• the desire to deploy frugal innovation on a wider scale, so as to maximize its social and economic impact.