Guest Editorial

Abstract

This Journal of Entrepreneurship (JoE) special issue focuses on the central question of whether so-called appropriate/frugal technology research and innovation can lead to various forms of entrepreneurship in order to propose and implement concrete solutions meeting community, local and even national and global sustainability development challenges. Such solutions can be forged by private and public actors, including public–private partnerships among so-called developed, emerging and developing countries. The very concept of this special issue is inspired by an Edward Elgar Publishing Handbook of Innovation and Appropriate Technologies for International Development issued in the fall of 2022. This handbook is co-edited by Philippe Régnier and Pascal Wild (University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland/HES-SO) together with eminent colleagues at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-Madras, Chennai, India), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Boston, USA) and Polytechnique Montreal (Montreal, Canada). Through 17 chapters, the handbook delivers a detailed overview of how the mid-twentieth-century Gandhian concept of appropriate technology and know-how for improving living conditions of grassroot people and communities has evolved over time from its early diffusion from India to the developing world at large. It experienced wide transformations led by the rise of emerging countries since the 1980s–90s, lately combined with the twenty-first-century global digitalisation era.