Grassroots Innovations Bh4eSo6P1Az8J3Ui Prosiding 2012

Prosiding Forum Tahunan Pengembangan Iptekin Nasional 2012 6 developed low-cost devices specifically for the Indian market, sales volumes have been below expectations, apparently due to their failure to create appropriate low-cost distribution and service networks, and inherent distrust of low-cost devices among the medical fraternity Duray and Avinash, 2012.

2.4. Grassroots Innovations

A third driver of innovation has been the grassroots innovation movement. An effort to identify and document local innovations particularly by farmers and traditional knowledge in use in rural settings was launched in Gujarat in the late 1980s by Professor Anil Gupta at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. This subsequently evolved into a national “Honey Bee” network that has its own publications, website, etc. Impressed by the wealth of knowledge available with these grassroots innovators, systematic efforts to support them and make their knowledge widely available were started through the creation of non-profit organizations called Sristi and GIAN Grassroot Innovations Augmentation Network Krishnan, 2005. In 2000, the Government of India set up the National Innovation Foundation NIF under the umbrella of the Ministry of Science Technology. The NIF’s mission is to encourage and support innovation in the country by identifying, categorizing, and documenting grassroot innovations; to give awards to outstanding innovators; and to provide support for the scaling- up and diffusion of promising innovations Krishnan, 2005. Recently, the NIF has announced awards for inventors who can solve socially-relevant grand challenges. In a related initiative, the government has supported the creation of a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library TKDL that acts as a repository for traditional knowledge and prevents the appropriation of Indian traditional knowledge by inventors in other countries by documenting and sharing information on “prior art”Krishnan, 2011. Most of the grassroot innovators lack formal education. Much of their innovation is aimed at solving problems they have themselves faced on their farms, or in daily life. Since they work under tight resource constraints, their solutions are usually based on locally-available materials and clever improvisation. The innovations are frugal thanks to the context in which they were created.

2.5. Environmental Sustainability Concerns