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1. Introduction
Frugal innovation is one of the concepts, being proposed today in scientific and industrial circles, especially in developing countries and in emerging markets (Tiwari et al., 2016; Radjou and Prabhu, 2015; Ramdorai and Herstatt, 2015). The main idea of this type of innovation is to provide products and services that are appropriate for the specific needs of these markets and provide opportunities for consumption to non-wealthy consumers (Weyrauch and Herstatt, 2017). Bhatti (2012) believes that this type of innovation is not only about reducing cost but also means increasing the affordability power of the buyer through income generation, saving or alternative payment schemes. Frugal innovation may mean local entrepreneurship, capacity building and self-reliance or sustainability.
Many studies have been conducted on frugal innovation, identifying its concept and determining its features. For example, Farooq (2017) in his research presented a conceptual model for frugal innovation and how its relationship is with value creation. The conducted study with exploratory nature introduced the most important dimensions of frugal innovation as affordability, simplicity, quality, sustainability, resilience and management support. In this study, the moderating effect of environmental munificence was also studied on the relationship between frugal innovation and value creation. The mentioned study ignored factors such as the role of empowered and creative human resources, marketing and the role of localism. Belkadi et al. (2016) also identified five main directions as efficient leverages for developing frugal products for specific markets with favorable cost and quality that we are developing new products from scratch in local R&D centers; developing frugal products as an adaptation of existing solution for local markets, by replacing current materials with cheaper but functional ones; removing non-essential product and service features from rent products and services; re-designing the production network by increasing the proportion of regional suppliers; and modifying current production processes and strategies to reduce manufacturing and logistics costs. In this study, factors such as enabled human resources, the role of management and marketing in creating frugal innovations were not studied either.
Thus, although previous studies provided valuable concepts in relation to frugal innovation, no comprehensive and valuable research was observed in the field of identifying as comprehensive as possible the enabler dimensions of frugal innovation and the factors affecting this type...