As part of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Minor Frugal Innovation for Sustainable Futures, we highlight the work of students who engage in interdisciplinary research on sustainable and inclusive solutions. 
This month, we feature the blog of Lisanne de Haan, who joined the Frugal Innovation minor after finishing my bachelor Security Studies at Leiden University.
During her studies, she developed a strong foundation in human security, international politics, and social inequalities. She is currently shifting her focus toward environmental design, particularly biomimicry and bio-design, with the aim of contributing to transformative change in polluting industries. She is interested in integrating social and natural sciences to build bridges and develop more holistic approaches.
In this blog, Lisanne critically reflects on the promise of (frugal) innovation by examining a case study of improved biomass stoves in rural India. Through this example, she shows how even well-intended, human-centered innovations can struggle to achieve lasting social and environmental impact when long-term user behavior and local realities are not sufficiently understood.
'' Since the Industrial Revolution, we have believed that innovation drives our society further and that it will lead us to an improved circumstance of living. This makes us believe that when something is 'innovated', it will always come with positive outcomes. This blog shows that the path to making a meaningful impact is harder than we might imagine. ''
- Lisanne de Haan
What is (frugal) innovation?
Innovation is seen as introducing novel devices, methods or materials for application to fulfil commercial or practical objectives. This can be initiated by many kinds of people and groups, such as multi-national research companies, but also by people innovating from the local level.
Frugal innovation is reimagining the process of innovation and drifting away from the emphasis on growth, mechanisation & protocolization. The notion of frugality emerged from the new societal challenge of resource constraints and the motivation to lower the cost index of products to enter the market viably. It was only quickly forgotten during the consumerism era, pushed by the Industrial Revolution, where fulfilling consumerist desires was promoted. From the 1970s onward, frugality was debated and published about again due to environmental and ecological concerns. Now, it is a multi-faceted concept which also focuses on designing innovations from a more “human-centred approach”, including emphasis on wider accessibility, low-cost/resource functionality and simplicity of a product.
Innovating frugally from the Indian rural context
For several decades, India has been struggling to solve the problem of indoor air pollution in households. Currently, many households are dependent on using traditional stoves, especially households in rural areas. They burn solid fuels like wood, hay, cow dung, and crop waste. However, the burning of waste is done inefficiently, producing large amounts of smoke and toxic emissions, including carbon monoxide and particulate matter. Consequently, cooking causes severe indoor air pollution, which leads to numerous health issues such as cancer, respiratory infections and other illnesses.
In 2006, BP Energy India Ltd. made an attempt to combat this societal issue through commercially distributing advanced stoves. This was done to fulfil the needs of households and to contribute in moving to alternative clean energy options. This was realised through a collaboration between BP and its Indian successor company, First Energy Private Limited (FEPL). The target group that the company wanted to reach were low-income families situated in rural areas. To figure out how to create a cost-effective stove that will also meet the needs of these families, a team of researchers conducted ethnographic research to delve into the routines and habits of rural families. Besides fitting the context and the needs of the families, the product also needed to be functional, accessible, available and energy-efficient. Hence, the team collaborated with several local actors to interact with and include their knowledge in the design processes.
Examples are: village-level entrepreneurs, several NGOs, Indian universities and other knowledge institutes. Consequently, the company team could build strategies on increasing the energy efficiency, safety and popularity of the improved stove. Subsequently, creating a business eco-system that would support the smooth integration of a product into local communities. This included collaboration with women, closely connected to the community, to advise potential buyers of the stoves as well as stock for the stoves and fuel. This was crucial for making stoves accessible and fuel available all the time. Furthermore, creating awareness among community members on how the new stove worked and why it was better than traditional ones.
Women using an improved biomass stove
To summarise, the company wanted to achieve changes through entering an unsaturated market of customers with low-level incomes. Making changes to create opportunities for a more sustainable future, which includes the health of the natural environment as well as improving the quality of every human life. Till now, you might have still thought that innovation and development with a good cause will often leap into success. However, I will show you that the leap towards realising the intended positive impact is a longer road than you have imagined, especially when it comes to frugal innovation.
The difficult pathway to meaningful impact
The project of developing an energy-efficient and human-friendly biomass stove began with a positive notion to make a social and environmental impact. The team made an adequate “business eco-system” which would help the social enterprise to develop the stove and sell it at an affordable price. In 2009, the initial success of the enterprise was shown when they sold over 400,000 stoves.
Despite its initial success, the company eventually faced long-term difficulties, which were not taken into account enough beforehand. While focusing predominantly on creating the perfect starting block for the product to be distributed, the company forgot the depth into which they dove and did not explore the receiving end well enough. A short-term timeline on development, distribution and an affordable price were the biggest research areas. However, the questions about what the incentives of the customers were to continuously use the improved biomass stove in the long term were left unanswered. The predominant focus on being able to enter an unsaturated low-income market eventually became the pitfall of the company. Without thinking about the long-term customer behaviour, the foundation for a meaningful innovation, which delivers a sustaining impact, came to crumble.
While researching the routines of the households and refining technology towards it, a research bubble was created, and the human character of the problem was eventually not seen anymore. The complicated problem that India deals with is that people are used to traditional stoves, especially people in rural areas. For them, the new biomass stove was a “black-box” in which they could not see the direct benefits of it. Additionally, due to the low-income circumstances, most families only had the incentive to transition to a new stove when economic benefits were shown. To be able to improve the situation, knowledge should have been connected to the perspective of the people who are eventually going to use the biomass stove. What benefits do they see? Are they even aware of the health risks? Not seeing that it is a “human-problem” that one is dealing with, caused the company to face challenges that grew out of their distance towards exploring the long-term experience of end-users.
Long-term trajectory of a product
After the starting phase, the company dealt with struggles in stabilising the supply chain of the pelletized biomass fuel. This created issues when demand increased, driving up pellet prices and creating problems for low-income households as access to the stove’s benefits became limited. As there was not enough attention paid towards how rural households value the improved stove, and how to build trust in the product. When economic benefits disappeared, so did the customers. Subsequently, several households reverted again to traditional stoves, undermining the intended health and environmental benefits. Thus, while the new stoves were able to significantly reduce indoor air pollution and firewood usage, the transition for households to move to the stove was not smooth, as it was not thought through enough. This brought further fuel price fluctuations and inconsistent supply, which caused the unintended consequence of creating stress and driving marginal households back to more polluting technologies. Eventually, in the long term, only about 9% of households that purchased the stove still used it.
Lessons to bring home
This case has shown that an innovation can go from hero to zero quickly when the research process solely focuses on distributing and manufacturing the developed product. Subsequently, the customer side of the product and the practice of exploring the long-term trajectory of the product are not included enough. This blog is not written to argue that we cannot believe in innovation anymore. Instead, it tries to illustrate that we cannot just assume that innovation is something that always leads to sustained positive outcomes. This case has shown that despite the high investments in refining technology, an accurate perspective on the chance of reaching the intended impact can only be attained in combination with knowing human experiences and decisions of the end-user. The team behind the improved biomass stove did not take into account the long-term user behaviour or the smoke perceptions of the user well enough. Hence, when prices could not be kept stable, the initial “social enterprise” needed to shift to a new market with more commercial users to enable the company to survive. However, this entailed letting go of certain social impact goals.
Thus, my advice to future engineers or social entrepreneurs is to further dive into user incentives and the consumer’s perspective towards specific risks that the innovation wants to combat. Furthermore, to know that the commercialisation of marginally profitable businesses aimed at social impact needs to occur over a much longer time horizon. Just distributing an “innovative” product and assuming the achievement of an intended impact is something that we should avoid. Exploring the implementation side, including direct and indirect influences, is where a lot more magic can happen.
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