A new term — one I’ve just learned, and one I’ll be using from now on.
Especially when my discussion partner is frustrated by regulatory or market pressure. 🙂
I heard about frugal innovation yesterday, when I joined a webinar about the CE:FIRE project (circular, frugal, regenerative), presented by the researchers [Marina Fecke] and [Clara Baues] from the [Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy], and hosted by [René Jansen] at [wfg Wirtschaftsförderung Kreis Soest GmbH].
The core idea of frugal innovation
Keep it simple.
Circular innovation doesn’t have to be time-consuming or costly.
Small changes in mindset, technology, or operations can result in surprisingly outsized effects.
The Frugal Canvas makes those options visible — circular business models make them stick.
Frugal itself stands for:
- Frugal
- Robust
- User-friendly
- Growing / flourishing
- Alternative revenue
- Solution-oriented (lösungsorientiert)
My biggest takeaway
Product-level circular potential, business case, and implementation reality only work together.
But it doesn’t have to be “too much” to create valuable results.
Again, many thanks for the great insights and for organising the webinar. 🙂
What is your experience?
When a circular initiative stalls — is it the potential, the business case, or the path to start that’s missing?