The apolitical framing of frugal innovation in the global south: beyond the tales of scarcity, heroic inventors and techno-fixes

Abstract

In this chapter it is argued that frugal innovation literature should be historically situated within the evolution of the ‘discourse of development’ from an approach based on state-driven interventions to a market-oriented logic that emphasizes the role of innovation in the context of economic development. As a result, a great deal of frugal innovation literature focused on addressing the problem of poverty in the Global South has been framed around neoliberal values and ideology. The chapter analyses three manifestations - three tales - of this ideology in frugal innovation literature: the notion of scarcity, its politics and its causes; the actors, usually framed as individual male heroic inventors; the ideology of technological fix, that is, a de-politicised way of framing technology. Although complex and increasingly interdisciplinary, frugal innovation literature, it is argued, is still dominated in various ways by different conceptualizations of these three tales. The chapter’s aim is to discuss why these tales are problematic and to propose a research agenda that promotes new directions in frugal innovation literature.