ABSTRACT
The fourth industrial revolution has created an expectation for academia to reshape and rethink the focus of how universities keep pace with the technological advances, skills, and knowledge required in the twenty-first century to become centres for the generation and incubation of innovations. This chapter demonstrates the unique position of universities to go beyond their traditional missions of teaching and research towards embracing the so-called third mission of making a meaningful contribution to advance the concept of frugal innovation through collaborative engagements that exchange knowledge with multiple stakeholders. To pursue this objective, the Kujali Innovation Hub, a university-embedded innovation hub based in Cape Town, South Africa, is presented as a case study. The central argument in this chapter is that knowledge exchange plays an essential role in developing capacity for frugal innovation and that universities are uniquely positioned to advance the development of frugal innovation. Although knowledge exchange is considered a prerequisite for innovation, limited empirical research has been conducted on the mediating role of universities in fostering frugal innovation through the exchange of knowledge. This chapter contributes to addressing this gap by exploring knowledge exchange practices of a university-embedded innovation hub that fosters frugal innovations. The value proposition of innovation hubs cannot be overstated, let alone their impact on sustainability. The chapter presents the learnings through retrospective reflections of the descriptive experiences of the successes and challenges of Kujali's approach in fostering frugal innovation in an academic setup.
