The Center of Advanced Frugal Innovation provides information and advice on the development of Advanced Frugal Innovation. The center represents a platform for exchange between science, business and politics. The main participants are the Institute for Economic and Cultural Geography at the Leibniz University in Hanover and the Department of Engineering Design at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai.

Frugal innovations (FI) are new or adapted products, which consist of renewable and sustainable materials and technologies and whose components are optimally coordinated with each other. By using fewer and cheaper materials, costs for resources can be saved and prices for customers reduced. In this way, less affluent customers in the Global South and Global North can also purchase these products with fewer problems.

However, the concept of FI does not always use the idea of ​​sustainability and products can contain environmentally harmful materials. Such qualitatively poor FI are also called Unrefined Frugal Innovations (UFI). Advanced Frugal Innovations (AFI), on the other hand, give equal weight to both socio-economic and ecological benefits. In order to create functional and sustainable frugal products, sophisticated engineering and in-depth research must be carried out. The development process of AFI is organized much more systematically with frugal engineering. As an interface between expensive environmental innovations and frugal cost advantages, AFIs can be of great benefit to society as a whole.

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AFI-Briefing

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