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Exploratory Study of the Integration of Frugal Innovation in the Design of Products for the BoP

Part of: Responsible Design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Luis Miguel López Santiago ,
Serge Rohmer ,
René Díaz Pichardo  and
Tatiana Reyes
Luis Miguel López Santiago*
Affiliation:
Université de Technologie de Troyes, France;
Serge Rohmer
Affiliation:
Université de Technologie de Troyes, France;
René Díaz Pichardo
Affiliation:
Université de Technologie de Troyes, France; South Champagne Business School, France
Tatiana Reyes
Affiliation:
Université de Technologie de Troyes, France;
*
Contact: López Santiago, Luis Miguel, University of Technology of Troyes, France HETIC – CREIDD, France luis_miguel.lopez_santiago@utt.fr

Abstract

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The bottom of the pyramid (BoP) consists of 1.4 billion people living less than 1.25 USD per day. Fulfilling unmet needs of BoP people involves the design of products as a main activity. Designing products for the BoP faces two main problems. First, there is a general lack of understanding of the needs of users and second, traditional design methods may be limited in addressing the BoP context. Frugal innovation is positioned as a very interesting approach with the potential to adequately respond to the design challenges of the products for the BoP. However, studies in engineering design based on frugal innovation are still limited. In response to these issues, through an analysis and review of the literature, an exploratory mapping of the proposals in frugal innovation and the characteristics of the BoP was conducted. On the basis of the results, this paper defines a set of eight frugal criteria design and an identification of three dimensions that characterize a BoP context and two roles of BoP people. Finally, an association of BoP dimensions and roles with the key criteria of frugal design is proposed.

Keywords

New product developmentDesign processDesign engineeringFrugal InnovationBottom of the Pyramid (BoP)
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , July 2019 , pp. 3311 - 3320
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019

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