Technology transfer and frugal social innovations: looking inside an emerging economy

Private and public resource scarcity is a critical problem in emerging economies. Although technology transfer policy frameworks exist, innovation and entrepreneurial become complicated processes by the highest R&D opportunity-costs. It explains the emergence of frugal innovation that involves doing the best with the available resources to solve society's problems and needs. However, little is known about the relationship between knowledge transfer and frugal innovations. This chapter investigates the scarcity of resources and the technology transfer framework in frugal innovation ecosystems. Our results show the frugal social innovation's obstacles and the crucial role of technology transfer policy frameworks by analyzing the Chilean case. The chapter contributes to the re-conceptualization of the frugal innovation approach and provokes the discussion about the promotion of frugal social innovations through technology transfer on the road to a sustainable future.