Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

An exploratory Study on the Marketing Challenges in the Diffusion of Grassroot Innovations: ACase study from IndiaSubin SudhirDesignation - Doctoral Student (FPM, II year)• Institute - Indian Institute of Management – Kozhikode• Contact AddressHostel - J, Room – 310IIM-KozhikodeIIMK Campus PO, Kunnamangalam, Calicut, KeralaPin: 673570• Phone - +91-9946642477• Email – subins04fpm@iimk.ac.inAbstractGrassroot Innovations are essentially solutions generated by people at the grassroots levels to tide overpersistent problems, the solutions to which are either not available or not affordable by a large section ofthe consumer masses in developing countries like India. These innovations, therefore, capture an unmetneed of a large section of the population and building a value chain around these innovations to take themto market holds the potential of wealth creation in a truly sustainable and equitable manner. The paperlooks at an exploratory study that uses the context of a case study from Kerala to develop a broadunderstanding of the issues and areas of future research in this region. Key challenges identified in thecontext of diffusion of grassroot innovations include (1) financial resource availability to the adopter, (2)lack of communication opportunities, (3) Budgetary constraints for the innovator for marketing of theinnovation, (4) sharing of expertise for the innovator and (5) a broader outlook at the drivers of grassrootinnovationIntroductionThe role of technology and innovation in emerging markets is great. Innovation and technologicalsolutions to everyday problems faced by people, if integrated with low costs can be the way to success fordeveloping countries and specifically the emerging markets like the BRIC (Gupta; 2009). It is important tounderstand that the role of this paper is to evaluate the marketing challenges after the innovation has beendeveloped; and not to understand the challenges in developing the innovation. Both the issues are ofimportance to the emerging markets, but this paper would focus on the challenges that the innovator facesafter he has developed the innovation and has decided to get it commercialized.The next sections of the paper looks at the relevant theorizing done in the - mostly in the context ofdeveloped economies, the case study is then elaborated to bring in the micro-level sociocultural factors