Frugal innovation

From Researching Virtual Initiatives in Education

In e-learning circles, frugal innovation is a term recently popularised by the TLT Group to denote an approach to innovation characterised by very careful, insightful and economical use of resources, both human and material, when innovating courses.

This is described in more detail in a description of their online workshop to be held in August 2009. Some examples include:

• use of external "cloud computing" systems like Google's Gmail not just for recreational or social use but for direct pedagogic purposes
• use of un-owned resources such as OER, with the concomitant issues of support and updating
• use of handheld devices and more generally, devices owned by all or most students
• future use of textbooks

More general meanings

The term is quite commonly used in countries such as India or China to describe a specific kind of innovation which takes great care to minimise costs of innovation and cost of final product.

The top hit currently on Google is an article on Frugal innovation in Business Standard magazine of 31 July 2009, describing General Electric's technology centre in Bangalore. a "low-cost but cutting-edge facility".

In this context the approach is often called Frugal engineering - described as "the ability to manufacture low cost versions of goods for mass markets" in the 2009 article Introduction: The internationalization of Chinese and Indian firms—trends, motivations and strategy by Suma Athreye and Sandeep Kapur.

Further reading

There is, unusually, no entry in Wikipedia - except for frugality. However, this does usefully list nine strategies for frugality:

1. the reduction of waste
2. curbing costly habits
3. suppressing instant gratification by means of fiscal self-restraint
4. seeking efficiency
5. avoiding traps
6. defying expensive social norms
7. embracing cost-free options
8. using barter
9. staying well-informed about local circumstances and both market and product/service realities.

It is left as an interesting exercise for the reader to apply these nine approaches to their own institution.

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