User-Driven Innovation with Frugal Characteristics

A Multi-Case Analysis of China’s Innovation-Driven Economy

authored by

Henning Kroll, Ingo Liefner

Abstract

This paper emphasises the continued and renewed relevance of user-driven, frugal innovation for economic development in China, thus challenging the increasingly prevalent, technology-centred approach to explaining local economic growth in that country. Taking up inspirations from other emerging economies’ discourses, it demonstrates that business models aimed at innovation for mid- to low-income markets continue to play a role for China. Acknowledging that “frugal innovation” as such is not a common term in China to date, it underlines that three fundamental elements of frugal activities are indeed very vividly present in China and deserve further attention. First, the awareness for and ability to designing focused, user-oriented solutions in unorthodox ways, second, the ability to leverage and network distributed capacity outside of the nation’s geographic centres of innovation and, third, ability to explore new models of collaborative innovation that reach beyond corporate boundaries. Furthermore, it highlights that, nowadays, digital technologies enable novel approaches to matching different types of innovation supply and demand at various levels throughout the country.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Economic and Human Geography

External Organisation(s)

Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI)

Type

Contribution to book/anthology

Pages

95-116

No. of pages

22

Publication date

2021

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Business and International Management, Strategy and Management, Management Science and Operations Research, Marketing, Management of Technology and Innovation

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67119-8_5 (Access: Closed)