Frugal innovation and digital effectuation for development: the case of Lucia

ABSTRACT

This paper illustrates how the lens of effectuation and frugal innovation can be employed to understand digital entrepreneurial practices in development contexts. It presents the case of the director Pawan Kumar, who produced the movie Lucia by relying upon digital tools to create a project identity, to access resources and knowledge from his network, to experiment with variations of his business idea, as well as to secure commitment from partners on a scale that would be impossible otherwise. Using this empirical setting, the paper analyses the practices employed by entrepreneurs in development contexts to overcome resource limitations and institutional voids by leveraging digital technologies to pursue opportunities. The case contributes to the literature on ICT4D by illustrating how digital entrepreneurship has the potential not only to bring about economic benefits, but also to stimulate local culture production, an impact of digital entrepreneurship often overlooked in the literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Frugal innovation
• effectuation
• digital technology
• digital entrepreneurship
• explanatory case study

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As of September 2020, the movie has an IMDB rating of 8.3/10 over 11 328 votes, has won the Best Film Award at the London Indian Film Festival, and was nominated for India’s submission toward the Best Foreign Film category at the America’s Academy Awards (the Oscars): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2358592/

2 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2358592/

3 The movie can be found on multiple streaming platforms as of 2020, such as Netflix (in certain countries), SunNXT, JioCinema and MXPlayer:

• https://www.netflixmovies.com/lucia-2013

• https://www.sunnxt.com/movie/detail/7879/lucia

• https://www.jiocinema.com/movies/lucia?type=0&id=34e770d0adf011e984541bf90d34e6f0

• https://www.mxplayer.in/movie/watch-lucia-movie-online-900200170b914fbddbdcea2da87bdfff

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Prem Bhushan Khanal

Prem Khanal is currently completing his PhD from Victoria University of Wellington while working as a Senior Systems Analyst at National Telehealth Line, New Zealand. He has worked on a multitude of technology/business platforms as a Software Developer, IT Support Engineer, Database Administrator, and Head of Data Center in some of the largest enterprises of Nepal. He was awarded an ADB-JSP scholarship for his Masters study at Keio University, Japan and a Doctoral Scholarship for his PhD studies. Prem Khanal’s research interests include frugal/reverse/bop innovation, entrepreneurship, effectuation, digital effectuation, IT affordances, IT business alignment, and IT project management.

Benoit A. Aubert

Benoit A. Aubert is Professor at HEC Montreal (Canada) and a Fellow of the CIRANO (Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis on Organizations). His previous roles include Director of the Rowe School of Business at Dalhousie University, and Head of the School of Information Management at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) His main research areas are risk management, innovation, outsourcing, and business transformation.

Jean-Grégoire Bernard

Jean-Grégoire Bernard is a Senior Lecturer at the Victoria School of Business and Government at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. His research focuses on issues pertaining to digital innovation, online communities, and online disinformation. His work has been published at the Communications of the Association for Information Systems, the International Conference on Information Systems, the AoM Meetings, and Systèmes d’Information & Management.

Ravikumar Narasimhamurthy

Ravikumar Narasimhamurthy is a Doctoral Student in the Information Systems Area at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India. Previously, he has managed several digital initiatives in multinational organizations. His research interests include business-IT alignment, IS integration in M&A, and IT-enabled innovation.

Rahul Dé

Dr. Rahul Dé is Professor of Information Systems at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. His research interests are in AI, ICT for Development, Open Source and e-Government Systems. He has published 5 books, 25 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, and over 50 articles in other research outlets. He serves on the editorial boards of 5 international research journals. He has received numerous awards for research and teaching.