Beyond Traditional IT-enabled Innovation: Exploring Frugal IT Capabilities

Abstract

Innovation programs in developed economies are centered on resource richness and abundance. As firms seek newer innovation paradigms to sustain competitive advantage, we suggest the use of “frugal innovation”, which originates in emerging economies and is rooted in low cost approaches, constrained resources, and flexible improvisation. Frugal innovation principles when viewed from the theoretical lens of IT capability, RBV, and other related literature, can provide a rich foundation for frugal IT innovation research. In this exploratory paper, we explain the concept of frugal innovation and its position within a number of existing innovation paradigms. This is a significant contribution considering the number of emerging innovation concepts. We also demonstrate the potential integration of frugal innovation principles with traditional IT-enabled innovation approaches – a concept we call “frugal IT innovation”. We then explore potential “frugal IT capabilities” that may enable frugal IT innovation and finally provide propositions to guide future research.