Archives of Humanities & Social Sciences Research
ISSN: 3065-3568 | DOI: 10.64030/3065-3568
Boniface Okanga and Jennifer Davis Adesegha
Frugal innovation is increasingly becoming important for the contemporary businesses to re-create their existing products to respond to the constantly evolving needs of the modern consumers for simple, affordable, convenient and easy to use quality products. As businesses respond to such needs, it also lowers the operational costs to improve the business’ overall cost competitiveness. Even if these induce a lot of values for the business, most of the contemporary businesses were still found to experience enormous challenges when seeking to use frugal innovation principles. Major impediments often arise from incompatible management approach and the tendency of businesses to over engineer and offer in the quest to attain competitive edge and attract more customers. Yet, as they do that, overengineering and offering increase costs that affect competitiveness. To address such hurdles, it is suggested that businesses that aim to attain competitive edge must focus on using frugal innovation principles encompassing affordability, simplicity, sustainability, flexibility and scalability. In that processes, the contemporary businesses can use a combination of innovation strategies encompassing resource, cost, need, reverse, sustainability, Jugaad, process, digital, socially, modular, hybrid and inclusive frugal innovations.