Informal Innovations: Insights from Artisan Clusters and Makerspaces in India

Innovation is considered to be the engine of economic development for any nation.

This is why studies on innovation have gained immense scholarly attention from different disciplines giving various insights.

However, one major limitation of the studies on innovation has been their emphasis on the formal structures of the economy like R&D institutes, firms and industries. There is very scant literature that focuses on the innovations which emerge in informal environments.

In academic literature, there have been no agreed frameworks that are targeted towards the innovations generated within the informal contexts.

The limited amount of attention it received revolves around the concepts such as frugal innovations, grassroots innovations or jugaad. Moreover, policy thinking has been to suppress the informality and transfer it into the rigid formal sector.

In view of the limited focus on innovations within the informal settings in India, this project proposes to study innovations developed in informal settings.

Such study will offer rich insights into the innovative activities, local resources, knowledge and collaborations that contribute to innovations. The project proposes to take two sites showcasing the rich prevalence of informal innovations. The first site will be of a traditional artisan cluster. Whereas, the second site, will focus on a more modern case of informal innovations, represented by the makerspaces.

This study will be useful to understand and compare the innovation characteristics in two different settings both representing some form of informality.

My project InfoInn aims to:1) study the networks, collaborations, and modes of learning among the different actors which facilitate innovations within the informal structure and 2) theoretically advance the literature on innovations by studying the informal contexts that will pave the way to open new perspectives on how to methodologically study and measure innovations in such contexts.