#whenfrugalmeetscircular Reading list
Did our articles and interviews catch your attention? Are you interested in reading more about Frugal Innovation and Grassroots innovation? The Circular Collective has a special list for you! This reading list shares articles, books and academic material of all-time curated for you. You'll find many great recommendations!
Books
Do Better With Less: Frugal Innovation for Sustainable Growth by Navi Radjou & Jaideep Prabhu (Link)
This groundbreaking book, by the bestselling authors of Jugaad Innovation, shows how India can harness the three megatrends -- the sharing economy, the maker movement and the circular economy -- and disruptive technologies such as AI and 3D printing to generate jobs and drive inclusive and sustainable growth in the decades to come. The world faces a stark challenge: meeting the needs of over 7 billion people without bankrupting the planet. India, with its large population and limited resources, is at the very epicentre of this challenge. It also offers a creative way out. Its resilient jugaad mindset, dynamic ecosystem of start-ups and enterprises and the practice of NGOs and governments working together promises not only to meet its own requirements in a sustainable way but also the needs of billions around the world. Packed with over fifty case studies, Do Better with Less offers six proven principles that Indian entrepreneurs and businesses can use to co-create frugal solutions in education, energy, healthcare, food and finance that are highly relevant to India and the world.
Grassroots Innovation Minds On The Margin Are Not Marginal Minds by Anil K. Gupta (Link)
A moral dilemma gripped Professor Gupta when he was invited by the Bangladeshi government to help restructure their agricultural sector in 1985. He noticed how the marginalized farmers were being paid poorly for their otherwise unmatched knowledge. The gross injustice of this constant imbalance led Professor Gupta to found what would turn into a resounding social and ethical movement—the Honey Bee Network—bringing together and elevating thousands of grassroots innovators. For over two decades, Professor Gupta has travelled through rural lands unearthing innovations by the ranks—from the famed Mitti Cool refrigerator to the footbridge of Meghalaya. He insists that to fight the largest and most persistent problems of the world we must eschew expensive research labs and instead, look towards ordinary folk. Innovation—that oft-flung around the word—is stripped to its core in this book. Poignant and personal, Grassroots Innovation is an important treatise from a social crusader of our time.
Jugaad 3.0: Hacking the Corporation to make it fast, fluid and frugal by Simone Ahuja (Link)
This book will prove that every organization's best chance, to survive and become better than ever, lies within itself. Against the decidedly progressive, action-oriented, and above all restless backdrop of disruption, the DNA of established business is starting to realign. It's the beginning of a groundswell that has started to make lean entrepreneurship a core competency within big business. Based on hundreds of interviews, as well as the author's consulting work within companies, Jugaad 3.0 Hacking the Corporation identifies the competencies these corporate hackers possess. It also offers a spectrum of carefully crafted archetypes to help people see themselves in this trend and allow organizations to identify the innovators in their midst.
Jugaad Yatra: Exploring the Indian Art of Problem Solving by Dean Nelson (Link)
India’s Mangalyaan mission to Mars and the Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car, are two of the country’s most celebrated achievements in recent times. They have something in common with the inverter which keeps the lights on during power cuts, the desert cooler which eases the searing summer heat and the hybrid trikes, half-Enfield Bullet motorbike, half-bullock cart, which slow traffic throughout northern India. They share traits with inspiring village inventions which offer cheap stoves, cool water, wind-powered pumps, safer wells and even sanitary towels to those who can least afford them. and they also share characteristics with some of the worst aspects of life in urban India unsafe vehicles, dangerous buildings, poor sanitation and shoddy standards of work and manufacturing. They are all examples of good and bad jugaad, the colloquial Hindi word for frugal innovation, a quick fix, improvised solution with cheap materials readily to hand and ‘out of the box’ solutions which bypass received wisdom, rules and regulations. The concept of jugaad divides many in India. Should the country embrace jugaad as the elixir of innovation or shun it as the celebration of the substandard? This book explores the special place jugaad has in Indian thinking and India
Journal Articles
· Albert, M. (2019). Sustainable Frugal Innovation-The connection between frugal innovation and sustainability. Journal of Cleaner Production, 237, 117747.
· Agarwal, N., K. Chung and A. Brem (2020). New technologies for frugal innovation. Frugal Innovation: A Cross Global Research Companion. A. J. McMurray and G. De Waal. Abingdon, Routledge: 137- 149
· Drabe, V. and C. Herstatt (2016). Why and how companies implement Circular Economy concepts – the case of Cradle to Cradle innovations. R&D Management Conference. Cambridge, UK
· Gupta, S. Understanding the feasibility and value of grassroots innovation. Journal of the Academic Marketing Science 48, 941–965 (2020). (link)
· Hyvärinen, A., Keskinen, M., & Varis, O. (2016). Potential and pitfalls of frugal innovation in the water sector: Insights from Tanzania to global value chains. Sustainability, 8(9), 888.
· Herstatt, Cornelius & Tiwari, Rajnish, 2020. "Opportunities of frugality in the post-Corona era," Working Papers 110, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Institute for Technology and Innovation Management. (Link)
· Keiller, S., & Charter, M. (2014). Grassroots innovation and the circular economy: a global survey of repair cafés and hackerspaces.
· Levänen, J., & Lindemann, S. (2016). Frugal innovations in the circular economy: exploring possibilities and challenges in emerging markets. The international society for ecological economics 2016 conference, transforming the economy: sustaining food, water, energy and justice. Washington DC, USA.
· Mouzakitis, Y., & Adamides, E. D. (2019, June). The Bottom-Up Side of Eco-innovation: Mapping the Dynamics of Sustainable Grassroots Innovations. In International Conference on Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (pp. 61-71). Springer, Singapore.
· Tiwari, R. and C. Herstatt (2020). The Frugality 4.0 Paradigm: Why Frugal Innovations are transcending beyond Emerging Economies. Frugal Innovation: A Cross Global Research Companion. A. J. McMurray and G. De Waal. Abingdon, Routledge: 40-53.
Reports and Articles
· Cheaper, Better, more relevant: is frugal innovation an opportunity for Europe? Fraunhofer and Nesta (Link)
· Black Americans past and present created frugal innovations and embraced circular economy principles: the marketing dilemma by Clovia Ann Hamilton (link)