Frugal Innovation to Tackle Covid-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant disruption in our lives, work, and business. It hit most of us as customers stopped buying, buying less, or less supply. People started coming up with innovative solutions speedily to meet their essential needs. Individuals, companies, and public authorities started to work together or separately to develop innovation to combat the COVID-19. Innovations are developed by cutting conventional corners to speed up the process to cope with the pandemic. Such solutions are termed as frugal innovations—quality solutions developed under resource constraints by using used, underused, or discarded materials to serve the basic needs of un(der)served customers. Frugal innovation is a recently emerged phenomenon, which shows how to solve problems differently and affordably as depicted here.