Politicians and policymakers usually communicate excitedly of the potential of scientific and technological innovation to spice up financial progress and improvement. Usually, the innovation they take note of emanates from shiny city-centre buildings.

However not all improvements that enhance folks’s lives want such assets. And this is the reason the creation of low-cost merchandise utilizing domestically obtainable, sustainable supplies for mass consumption — a course of typically known as ‘frugal innovation’ — is gaining traction.

A research in Communications Engineering offers a superb working example. An estimated half a billion folks worldwide lack entry to tampons and sanitary towels. Amongst different issues, the prices are too excessive: menstrual pads are sometimes comprised of scarce or comparatively expensive supplies, together with cotton, plastics and wooden merchandise. Bioengineer Manu Prakash at Stanford College in California and his co-authors have got down to change that. It’s a narrative that scientists, policymakers and publishers ought to research for example of low-cost innovation that would have a huge impact.

Wealthy nations should align science funding with the SDGs

The workforce used the sisal plant (Agave sisalana) to make menstrual pads¹. The plant is frequent in central America and elements of Africa. It’s hardy and thrives even when there’s little or no rainfall. The robust fibres derived from its lengthy leaves are often used to make rope, however Prakash and his colleagues’ innovation features a course of, often called delignification, that creates fluffy and absorbent materials from them. The authors are actually trying to scale up manufacturing.

Research of frugal innovation are unusual within the pure sciences literature, however seem extra usually within the social-science literature. That is partly as a result of such analysis has traditionally not been a precedence for science and engineering in high-income nations. That’s one thing that the Nature Portfolio journals, amongst others, are making a concerted effort to alter — not least as a result of it’s also related to accelerating progress in direction of assembly the 17 United Nations Sustainable Growth Targets.

The ideas underpinning frugal innovation will not be new. From the earliest instances, folks have used domestically sourced concepts and supplies to experiment with, analysis, develop and show low-cost merchandise and processes, from mechanical units to medicines. In south Asia, one model of this sort of innovation even has its personal phrase: jugaad. That is tough to translate merely, however could be taken to imply ‘make do and mend’.

A complicating consider analysis right this moment is the shortage of an agreed definition. Some interpret frugal innovation as being of low high quality, or having low requirements, for security or efficiency, for instance². Others disagree, saying that the success and scale of the quick — and infrequently frugal — innovation seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic³ confirmed that this isn’t the case. The publication of labor in peer-reviewed journals is one method to drive dwelling the purpose that frugal doesn’t should imply second finest.

Progress in direction of the Sustainable Growth Targets

There are different key variations between historic and fashionable efforts. In the present day’s innovators generally insist that concepts be scaled as much as profit the utmost variety of folks. This touches on one of many large unresolved challenges in frugal innovation. The advantages of sharing information — notably in open-access literature — are clear. Equally, intellectual-property rights exist to guard creators and make sure that they’re rewarded for his or her concepts and laborious work.

Prakash and his colleagues have opted for the primary possibility. Their strategies and information are overtly obtainable for anybody to make use of. The workforce sees its work as providing analysis and improvement to entrepreneurs who’re unable to undertake this work themselves.

By itself, nonetheless, frugal innovation shouldn’t be sufficient. Within the case of interval poverty, lowering prices is vital, however enhancements in schooling and well being providers should additionally play a component. However this could not take away from the authors’ exceptional achievement. Researchers have used their ingenuity and expertise to create and take a look at a high quality, low-cost product that has the potential to profit an enormous variety of folks. It’s an method that policymakers, scientists and journal editors have uncared for. It’s time not simply to make do, however to make amends.