Grassroots innovation movements are salient once again, although networks of activist-innovators go back to interest in appropriate technology in the 1970s and earlier. Common to these movements is a vision for innovation processes more inclusive towards local communities in terms of knowledge, processes and outcomes. After introducing some examples, this presentation considers different perspectives on grassroots innovation movements: grassroots ingenuity; grassroots empowerment; and structural critique. Each reveals three enduring challenges common to grassroots innovation: attending to local specificities whilst simultaneously seeking wide-scale diffusion; being appropriate to existing situations that one ultimately seeks to transform; and, working with project-based solutions to goals (of social justice) whose root causes rest in structures of economic and political power. Each challenge effectively frames grassroots innovation differently, and responses generate valuable forms of ethnographic, instrumental and critical knowledge. Overall, these movements contribute valuable plurality and diversity for innovation policy that is more inclusive and just.

For more information see: http://grassrootsinnovations.org/