Module 2: Innovation
Led by Ghita Dragensdahl Lauritzen (Copenhagen University) and Deborah Wallet-Wodka (Sorbonne University).
What is innovation and which roles does it play in society? In this module, we get an introduction to the concept of innovation, including open innovation practices and frugal innovation.
Innovation
Contents
Innovation is defined in many different ways. A simple definition of innovation is that it is a new application of knowledge and practices related to the satisfaction of socio-economic needs. Three aspects are central here:
“New” highlights the need for novelty in relation to what was available before in a given context. An innovation can be new to the world (never seen before in any context), new to the market (e.g. never seen before in that industry), new to the organisation (e.g. never seen before in that firm), or new to the individual (e.g., employee, citizen, patient, user).
“Application” highlights that an innovation has to be put into use – it needs to diffuse throughout society through some mechanism (e.g. the market or regulation) and implemented (e.g., in an organization). This marks the distinction to invention – inventions are simply the creation of something new for the first time, which however, if never put into use, do not contribute to innovations.
“Satisfaction of socio-economic needs” highlights that an innovation needs to provide value to users. This value is of course subjective. Innovations are thus not inherently good or bad/not improvements for all.
Open innovation is often defined as “an innovation model that emphasizes purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge across the boundary of a firm in order to leverage external sources of knowledge and commercialization paths, respectively” (Chesbrough & Bogers 2014, 10).
Frugal is defined as “economical in use or expenditure; prudently saving or sparing; not wasteful; entailing little expense; or requiring few resources”, so a major part of frugal innovation centers around the concept of sustainability. Frugal innovation can be understood as stripping down and/ or re-engineering products and services to offer quality goods at very low prices to the people at the “bottom of the pyramid”.
Course Materials
Readings
Books:
Frugal Innovation: How to do better with less, Navi Radjou & Jaideep Prabhu
Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth, Navi Radjou
Articles :
Stephanie Knizkov, Julia C. Arlinghaus, "Frugal Processes: An Empirical Investigation Into the Operations of Resource-Constrained Firms", Engineering Management IEEE Transactions on, vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 667-684, 2021.
Nivedita Agarwal, Julia Oehler, Alexander Brem, "Constraint-Based Thinking: A Structured Approach for Developing Frugal Innovations", Engineering Management IEEE Transactions on, vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 739-751, 2021.
N. Agarwal and A. Brem “Frugal innovation—Past, present, and future,”IEEE Eng. Manage. Rev., vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 37–41, Jul.–Sep. 2017.
