The Contribution of Frugal Innovation to the Deployment of Industry 4.0 and the Challenges Involved in its Application

Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution, represents a significant paradigm shift in the way manufacturing and industry operate. It is characterized by the integration of digital technologies, data exchange, and advanced automation to create “smart factories” that are more efficient, flexible, and responsive. And complementing the Industry 4.0 concept, frugal innovation presents itself as a strategic approach to achieving significant advances in products and processes while keeping costs to a minimum. This convergence of frugal innovation and Industry 4.0 represents a powerful synergy, but at the same time it faces significant challenges that may resist the effective contribution of the frugal innovation approach to industry. This research presents the contribution of the frugal innovation concept in Industry 4.0, and it highlights the various challenges involved in applying frugal innovation in emerging markets and in Industry 4.0, and which provides an anticipated vision of the solutions to be proposed to overcome these challenges. The results of our study showed the importance of the frugal innovation mindset in contributing to the realization of Industry 4.0, with the presence of certain challenges in different applications.