📋 Tender Overview
Newly started research project at Leibniz University Hannover surveys companies in Lower Saxony and Chennai IndiaExtremely inexpensive small cars inexpensive and transportable X-ray machines solar-powered night lights such inventions are known as frugal innovations. Frugal innovations are new products that fulfill a specific and known purpose but combine this with less use of materials at lower costs or with additional benefits for low-income users. India is considered the home of frugal innovations. Due to the potential for a more sustainable economy and the opening up of new markets frugal innovations have also moved into the focus of international research in recent years. The project Implementation conditions for frugality in innovation processes under the direction of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ingo Liefner from the Institute for Economic and Cultural Geography at Leibniz University Hannover LUH. The project is supported by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture with 166000 euros for three years through the Pro Niedersachsen funding program.The research focuses on company surveys in the Chennai region in India and in Lower Saxony. The aim is at least 300 evaluable questionnaires and ten company visits per region to deepen the knowledge. In addition to the LUH team Prof. Dr. Balkrishna Rao Professor of Engineering Design at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras IIT Madras in Chennai. The Chennai region serves as an example of a region of origin of frugal innovation. Lower Saxony is exemplary as a further developed industrial region. Both regions have economic focuses in the automotive industry and related industries.In industrialized countries innovations are rarely aimed at reducing the use of resources or lowering acquisition and operating costs. However multinational companies from Western countries in particular are showing a great deal of interest in frugal innovations and are therefore setting up departments in India or other emerging countries in order to use the skills of the engineers who live there.Project leader Prof. Liefner explainsDue to its strong dependency on a few sectors such as the automotive industry Lower Saxony is dependent on trying out new production options in order to survive future structural change.The project team first investigates how well-founded the companies knowledge of the application of frugality is. In addition the scientists determine which requirements exist in companies in order to apply frugal innovation processes. And third they research to what extent regional economic structures and institutions influence this knowledge and requirements.Liefner continues The research project will help to enrich the conceptual foundations of innovation research with regard to future relevant directions of innovation and their support. There is also a concrete benefit for innovating companies that are involved in the project and receive additional information on the subject of frugality. The project is the first attempt to empirically compare which influencing factors play a role in order to apply the principle of frugality in innovation processes. Should frugality establish itself as the standard of product development not only companies and consumers would benefit but above all climate and biodiversity because frugal products require far less energy resources and space than conventional products for production use and disposal as the project team emphasizes .
