Frugal innovation process: Comparing between grassroots and elite contexts

The objective of this paper is to understand the processes of the development of frugal innovation with an entrepreneurial spirit. The contributions of this study are twofold. First, we explore, compare, and contrast two very different contexts - grassroots and elite - of frugal innovation processes. Second, we show how individuals have very different understandings of frugal innovations as well as capacities and resources needed for the development of frugal innovations. Two prominent frugal innovation cases are used in this study. One innovation was developed by individuals from the USA and another developed by an individual from the Gujarat, India. Using effectuation theory we find that there are some distinct differences between two categories regarding finance, access to science and technology, the motivation of innovators, options they have, actions they take, etc.