DESIGN WITH THE ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES OF SIMPLICITY FOR BROADER SOCIAL IMPACT

Hosted by Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa & Philips Design

Conventional capital-intensive innovation processes employed in the industrialised world are difficult, if not impossible, to sustain in the developing world and emerging markets. They also do not meet the needs of low income households and communities. There is a need to an alternative way to design and develop robust, low cost, qualitative and sustainable solutions to everyday problems in low resource settings.

Designing products aimed at people living in developing or emerging markets is challenging. In this workshop, you are introduced to frugal innovation: a paradigm of innovation that considers resource constraints as an opportunity to develop novel, locally relevant interventions to local problems. When combined with Design Thinking, it provides an ambitious yet realistic proposition to design with less resources while having more impact.

Format
Frugal Innovations are value-sensitive design and marketing strategies that bring relatively sophisticated products, services and systems within the reach of the billions of poorer and emerging new middle class consumers. The combination of being highly functional, no-fringe and robust makes frugal products, services and systems fit for the future.

At the core of frugal innovation is design. This workshop is focused on uniting frugal innovation and design thinking. We are stepping outside comfort zones and into low resource settings. We will put our minds to innovative and creative solutions combining academia and practice with frugal innovation and design thinking.

Take-away
Instead of definitions, tools and showcases, we will focus on actually interlinking frugal innovation and design thinking. The academic perspective is followed up by practical expertise and a case study. Words become reality when we reach out to you to go frugal with us.

Read more about the Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa here.

THIS WORKSHOP will TAKE PLACE ON May 24 AT 11.30 – 13.00 IN THE MARNIX BORDES, STADSSCHOUWBURG