Resource Constrained Innovation at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Towards a Theoretical Framework

The traditional concept of innovation involves substantial financial investments, resource usage and existence of supporting institutions. However, in emerging economies that lack such resources and institutions the concept of innovation has to be modified accordingly. Thus, the focus is on understanding how innovation can be pursued with the existence of such constraints. The extant literature on this subject stands divided and fragmented, with no clear theoretical framework that coherently explains the concept of resource constrained innovation. This paper systematically reviews the literature on the existing research work and leverages on two relevant case studies to propose a model.