Frugal innovation and sustainability: bringing together polarized views from the state of the art

Ever since its inception, frugal innovation has been regarded as a means of catalysing sustainable value on a systematic scale, particularly in Base of the Pyramid (BOP) markets. Often, social, environmental and economic value is created through frugal innovation’s lower usage of resources, through an increased range of affordable products being made available to BOP consumers and through the inclusion of BOP populations in company processes. However, a growing body of research studying the sustainability of frugal innovation shows that a positive sustainable impact is not inherent to all frugal innovations. We address this gap by compiling illustrative examples of both the merits as well as the negative impact which certain frugal innovation characteristics can catalyse. We do so by explicitly articulating the implicit assumptions on the inherent sustainability of frugal initiatives in literature. Then, for each assumption we propose factors that might negatively impact the relationship between frugal innovation and sustainability and derive an appropriate subsequent counter-argument. Our aim is to create a solid foundation at the intersection of frugal innovation and sustainability for future academic work to build upon.