Innovation in the Global South
Innovation is a key enabler for climate change mitigation and adaptation, while also supporting broader economic and societal development goals.
This research theme investigates the complex social, institutional, and political dynamics that shape and impact innovation processes in Global South contexts. These diverse settings – for instance large informal sector, resource constraints and complex institutional dynamics – offer alternative and often unexpected perspectives to the study of innovation.
Experiences in the Global South make it clear that innovation goes beyond technical solutions alone as they are insufficient; organisational, cultural, and social factors play a significant role in innovation adoption and diffusion.
The theme works on generating new empirical and conceptual knowledge and adopting new methodological approaches for the study of the consequences and functions of innovation in Global South Economies. Importantly, the notion of the Global South is not confined to geographic boundaries. It also speaks to places that are socially and economically marginalised within industrialised or so-called Global North contexts.
The theme offers alternative approaches to innovation and in doing so, it enriches the broader discourse on innovation and sustainable development. It also brings in insights that re-position the Global South perspectives as central to more inclusive, contextually grounded, and socially responsive innovation pathways globally.
2025
The second workshop moved from ideation to strategy, focusing on concrete ways to advance research on exclusionary innovation. Building on the initial conceptual discussions, participants identified a set of guiding questions:
- Whose knowledge is not recognised as innovation?
- Who is excluded from participating in innovation activities?
- Whose contributions remain unmeasured or invisible?
- Whose needs are left unmet due to structural inequalities?
- What factors actively drive exclusionary forms of innovation?
Through this framing, the group collectively defined four preliminary verticals of enquiry where exclusionary innovation can be operationalised: energy transitions, knowledge production and learning, digital transformation (including AI), and businesses and firms. These verticals provide a flexible, federal structure, enabling smaller teams to work in parallel while remaining connected through the broader agenda of an Advanced Study Group. The workshop also outlined opportunities for collaboration on joint outputs and further development of this emerging research area.
This ideation workshop opened a critical conversation on the concept of exclusionary innovation. While much of the existing debate highlights inclusive innovation, the session started from the recognition that such inclusion is only necessary because innovation often excludes. Participants discussed how innovation processes can reproduce power asymmetries by privileging certain actors, ideas, metrics, and markets while marginalising others. Key questions included: who is involved in innovation processes, whose ideas are recognised, whose innovation is measured, and whose needs are addressed.
The aim was to collectively brainstorm and explore possible ways of conceptualising exclusionary innovation. Approaches included reviewing classic literature on inclusive innovation from a reversed perspective and pooling empirical examples of innovation-driven exclusion from participants’ own research. The workshop sought to build a shared understanding and to identify directions for concrete outputs, such as a blog post, position paper, or literature review.
Read about the exclusionary innovation workshop (Pdf. 180Kb)
Theme for the day: 'Reimagining Innovation in the Global South'
This workshop brought together researchers working on innovation in and for the Global South, with the aim of identifying shared interests, overlooked themes, and potential future collaborations.
2024
Key themes of discussion included system transformations, policy adaptation, and rethinking innovation through the lens of the place-based approaches-offering fresh insights into diverse pathways for just and sustainable development.
The group meets to discuss selected readings on specific themes that are of interest to researchers for their conceptual and theoretical propositions. Some key themes discussed in the book clubs include energy justice, sociotechnical imaginaries, role of universities, and grassroots innovations.
