1st Edition
Grassroots Innovation Discourse, Policy and Practice in the Global South
This book explores the process of grassroots innovation in the context of the Global South. It explains why these bottom-up solutions developed by common people are generated due to a lack of available or affordable technology to meet their needs and how they are included in the mainstream imagination of the economy by studying these innovations in India. It analyses the grassroots innovation process from idea generation to its implementation.
Detailing both theoretical and practical dimensions of grassroots innovation, the book provides a holistic understanding of the phenomenon by tracing its history in the pre-independence discourse on development to the present-day policies for institutionalizing these innovations in the mainstream. It will provide the readers with a bottom-up commentary on innovation and development in the context of the Global South in general and India in particular. It adopts a qualitative research design with a wide range of data collected through interviews, participant observations, and field notes. The book contains seven chapters to describe the discourse, policy perspectives, and current practice of grassroots innovations in general.
The interdisciplinary, timely book provides thoughtful analysis for scholars and upper-level students in the fields of technology and innovation management, development studies, and public management.
List of tables
List of figures
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations and acronyms
1 Introduction
2 Conceptualizing Innovations: Discourse in the formal and informal sector innovations
3 Innovations from the Below: Inverted models of innovation and the Global South
4 Grassroots Innovation in India: Philosophy, approaches and policy
5 Ideating Grassroots Innovation: Crafting solutions for the everyday problems
6 Implementing Grassroots Innovation: The pathways of diffusion
7 Concluding Remarks
References
Index
Biography
Hemant Kumar is Assistant Professor at the Department of Studies in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, School of Social Sciences, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. He has spent more than a decade in India working on innovations in the informal sector with an emphasis on grassroots innovations. Other areas of interest for him include STS studies, marginalization in STEM, science, technology, and innovation diplomacy, as well as the history and philosophy of science and technology.
Gautam Sharma is an early career researcher with a PhD in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies from the Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, India. He has worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at the DST-Centre for Policy Research at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, India. Following this, Gautam joined Lund University, Sweden, within the Centre for Innovation Research (CIRCLE) and the Division of Innovation, Department of Design Sciences, as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. His research focuses on innovation in informal contexts, particularly addressing the challenges and opportunities in the Global South.
