On 4 November 2022, Sanghamitra Chakravarty successfully defended her PhD thesis exploring frugality in medical advice manufacturing in South Africa.
Asking how resource-constrained innovation influences the direction of technological change, she explored innovation for and under resource constraints by situating South Africa's manufacturing SMEs at the centre of her analysis.
Against the backdrop of scarcity of appropriate medical devices, she took takes a 'development lens' to resource-constrained innovation, bringing in dimensions of capabilities, technological change and direction of innovation which have received little attention in current dominant frugal innovation discourse.
Her findings indicate that the relationship between resource-constrained innovation and development is not straightforward and the direction towards inclusion, while possible under certain conditions, is fragile.
Rewatch Sanghamitra's defence introduction
Photos of the defence
Read Sanghamitra's thesis
 The full text of the thesis will shortly be available for download from the ISS Library
In the meantime you can download the abstracts.
- Researcher