Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore grassroots innovation and efforts to foster it in India. I argue that it provides us with conceptual tools to both interrogate our dominant innovation systems and to imagine what a feminist innovation system might look like.

Paper long abstract:

What are the gender implications of our dominant innovation systems? What would a feminist approach to innovation systems look like? In this paper, I explore these questions by using recent efforts to foster "grassroots innovation" in India to both interrogate our dominant innovation systems and to imagine what a feminist innovation system might look like. Traditionally, our innovation systems are built upon the assumption of a linear model, in which research leads to technology development and diffusion. This process is facilitated by government research funding, private entrepreneurship, strong patent laws, and a free market. But this approach has had limited social benefit, both in terms of serving public needs and ensuring broad access. In recent years, development organizations and entrepreneurs have tweaked this approach, advocating social innovation, public-private partnerships, deliberative governance, and attention to the market at the "bottom of the pyramid". But India's government and NGOs, including the National Innovation Foundation and the Self-Employed Women's Association, are developing very different kinds of innovation systems. They are redefining "innovators" to include those with limited education and resources, and "innovation" to include more than novel artifacts. They are trying to redefine incentive structures, manufacturing, and distribution networks with these new definitions in mind, with the goal of empowering the public to produce sustainable solutions for the future. Does this approach provide a viable model? What are the gender implications of this alternative, and one might argue, more participatory, model?