ABSTRACT

Frugal innovation and related concepts are receiving increasing scholarly attention. While recent progress in the conceptualisation of frugal innovation as a phenomenon has been considerable, insights into the antecedents of frugal innovation remain relatively poor. We add to this literature by systematically conceptualising, theorising and empirically testing the relationship between resource constraints and the propensity of firms to produce frugal innovations, drawing on concepts of problemistic search and opportunity recognition. We distinguish two levels of resource constraints (firm-level and firm environment-level), and two types of frugal innovation (internally oriented and customer-oriented), while using managerial experience as a moderating internal factor. We find that firm-level resource constraints have a strong effect on the propensity of firms to engage in internally oriented frugal innovation, although only so for firms with experienced managers. This effect is lower when these firms operate in an environment that also faces high constraints. We find no effect of resource constraints on customer-oriented frugal innovations, but find a surprising negative moderating effect of managerial experience. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of these findings for the frugal and wider innovation literature. This study is the first large-scale empirical investigation of frugal innovation that estimates its prevalence. We find that frugal innovation is quite common when using the widest definition of frugal innovation. The majority of frugal innovations are mundane internal efficiency upgrades through capital investment.

摘要

节俭的创新和相关的概念受到越来越多的学术关注。尽管在节俭创新作为一种现象的概念化方面的最新进展相当可观，但对节俭创新的前因的见解仍然相对较少。我们通过问题搜索和机会识别的概念，通过系统地概念化，理论化和经验性地测试资源约束与企业产生节俭型创新的倾向之间的关系，来增加文献资料。在将管理经验作为调节性内部因素的同时，我们区分了两个层次的资源约束（企业层和公司环境层）和两种节俭型创新（内部导向和客户导向）。我们发现，企业一级的资源约束对企业进行内部节俭创新的倾向有很大的影响，尽管只有拥有经验丰富的经理的企业才能这样做。当这些公司在也面临高限制的环境中运营时，这种影响较低。我们发现资源约束对以客户为导向的节俭创新没有影响，但发现管理经验令人惊讶的负面调节作用。我们讨论了这些发现对节俭和更广泛的创新文献的理论和政策含义。这项研究是对节俭创新进行评估的普遍性的首次大规模实证研究。我们发现节俭创新在使用节俭创新的最宽泛定义时非常普遍。