Grassroots innovation: A review and a meta-theoretical sustainability assessment framework

Abstract

Diverse discourses converge into the importance of broadening the focus of sustainability innovations from merely cleaner technologies to more radical, paradigmatic innovations. Here, we focus on grassroots innovation (GI) as a radical innovation paradigm whose agents, goals and practices are fundamentally different from conventional innovation. Researchers typically attribute GIs the potential to influence the transition toward more sustainable production and consumption. Through a systematic literature review, we find that a research gap in the systematic analysis of GIs’ sustainability persists. We thus propose a meta-theoretical framework to systematise the sustainability assessment of GIs across three system levels: product, organisational model and socio-technical system. Our framework delineates how the theory and tools from sustainability assessment and sustainable business models may enrich sustainability transitions studies in the analysis of grassroots, and more broadly, radical innovation, providing a systems thinking view and increasing the credibility and reflexivity of sustainability arguments in transition studies.