Traditional innovation models, often characterized by sophisticated, high-cost, and technology-intensive processes, frequently fail to address the needs of unorganized sectors and marginalized populations living at the Bottom-of-the-Pyramid (BoP) (Bhatti et al., 2018; Knorringa et al., 2016; Lim and Fujimoto, 2019). These communities have largely been excluded from the benefits of technological progress (Bhattacharjya et al., 2019; Ray and Ray, 2011), creating an urgent need for alternative innovation paradigms. Frugal innovations are affordable, accessible, and contextually appropriate solutions that deliver value under severe resource constraints (Agarwal and Brem, 2017; Leliveld and Knorringa, 2018).

Frugal and BoP innovations are inherently creative responses to adversity (Corsini et al., 2020; Vesci et al., 2021). They embody the principle of “doing more with less for more people”, combining cost-effectiveness, simplicity, and social inclusiveness (Prabhu, 2017). Operating in environments of scarcity, they stimulate novel ways of thinking about design, production, and delivery - aligning closely with the R&D Management Conference 2026 theme of Creativity and Resilience. By transforming constraints into opportunities, frugal innovation fosters not only technological adaptability but also organizational, social and regional resilience (Albert, 2019; Al Omoush et al., 2025; Sheikh et al., 2024).

However, despite growing scholarly and policy interest, significant research gaps remain. First, existing literature has mainly focused on the outcomes of frugal innovation, such as affordable products or services, while less attention to studying the processes and organizational mechanisms through which creativity and resilience are generated under constraints. Second, there is limited empirical understanding of how frugality translates into long-term resilience, that is, whether innovations born in scarcity can adapt, scale, or influence mainstream innovation systems in both developing and developed economies (Hossain, 2018).

Multi-actor knowledge co-creation offers one promising lens for addressing these gaps, as it highlights how the quadruple-helix (Carayannis and Campbell, 2009) involving government, industry, university and civil society actors collaborate to co-design contextually embedded solutions (Bhattacharjya et al., 2023). Yet, the dynamics of such multi-actor engagement and how they balance inclusivity with efficiency remain poorly understood (Pisoni et al., 2018). Also, the governance and coordination mechanisms that enable such diverse actors to sustain frugal innovation ecosystems remain under-theorized, especially in terms of how power asymmetries, local institutional logics, agency relationships and resource dependencies shape collaborations (Borah and Ellwood, 2022; Pansera and Owen, 2018).

This track therefore invites scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to examine how innovation systems can be reconfigured to thrive under constraint, and how frugality and inclusiveness can redefine the boundaries of R&D and innovation management.

Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Frugal and BoP innovation as mechanisms for creativity and resilience under constraints
• New product development processes, especially how the fuzzy front-end unfolds in frugal innovation
• Knowledge co-creation, quadruple-helix collaboration and collaborative governance in frugal innovation ecosystems
• The role of community, local knowledge, and cultural context in driving frugal innovation
• Policy frameworks for scaling and sustaining frugal and BoP innovations
• Comparative studies of frugal innovation and resilience across contexts
• The intersection of sustainability, inclusivity, and creativity in resource-constrained innovation