FRUGAL INVENTION CANDIDATES AS ANTECEDENTS OF FRUGAL PATENTS — THE ROLE OF FRUGAL ATTRIBUTES ANALYSED IN THE MEDICAL ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY

Nora Altgilbers, Lothar Walter and Martin G. Moehrle
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Nora Altgilbers: Institute of Project Management and Innovation (IPMI), University of Bremen, Enrique-Schmidt-Straße 1, D 28359 Bremen, Germany
Lothar Walter: Institute of Project Management and Innovation (IPMI), University of Bremen, Enrique-Schmidt-Straße 1, D 28359 Bremen, Germany
Martin G. Moehrle: Institute of Project Management and Innovation (IPMI), University of Bremen, Enrique-Schmidt-Straße 1, D 28359 Bremen, Germany

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), 2020, vol. 24, issue 06, 1-23

Abstract: Frugal innovations enable companies to access new markets because of some specific characteristics. Typically, they focus on existing solutions as a blueprint, changing parts of their functionality while reducing the costs. Many companies are faced with the question how to find ideas for such frugal innovations. For this purpose, we introduce a method for the identification of frugal invention candidates and their qualification as frugal patents. We provide a general outline of a process and apply it to the medical engineering technology. By use of semantic analysis, we shed light on the moderating role of frugal attributes to qualify a frugal invention candidate as a frugal patent. The application produces a comprehensive set of frugal patents. Our approach deepens the understanding of frugality by providing an appropriate assessment based on a newly developed frugal thesaurus. Managers will have the option to adapt our method to their particular fields of experience.

Keywords: Frugal innovation; frugal patent; patent search; text-mining; semantic patent analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1142/S1363919620500826

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