Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) is a premier institute of science and technology established in 2008. IITH has been consistently ranked in the&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/reports/" rel="noopener noreferrer">top 10 institutes</a>&nbsp;in India for Engineering&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nirfindia.org/2021/EngineeringRanking.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to NIRF</a>&nbsp;making it one of the most coveted schools for science and technology in the country.

IITH offers&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/academics/under-graduate/">undergraduate programs</a>&nbsp;in all the classical engineering disciplines, applied sciences, design, as well as several modern interdisciplinary areas. Students are given a flexibility to explore a broad set of areas, and potentially pursue a minor or double major in a discipline that is not their own. Students who wish to seek a deeper understanding of their own discipline are strongly encouraged to get involved in cutting-edge research with the help of a faculty to mentor them, and earn an Honors in their own field.

The very foundation of IIT Hyderabad is based on&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/research/">research and innovation</a>. The vibrant research culture is evident from the number of patents and publications that IITH produces consistently every year. IITH offers&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/academics/programmes-offered/">graduate programs</a>&nbsp;at both a masters, and a doctoral level, in several diverse areas. There are separate programs for technology, design, science, and liberal arts. The&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/academics/post-graduate/">MTech program</a>&nbsp;is offered in various modes and durations to cater to the ever-growing need of postgraduate level professionals in the country.

IITH encourages and supports&nbsp;<a href="https://iic-iith.netlify.app/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">innovation and entrepreneurship</a>&nbsp;at every stage. The minor program in entrepreneurship is open to all students of IITH, and many of the courses are offered by industrialists who are entrepreneurs themselves. There are various&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/research/centres-incubators/">innovation centers and incubators</a>&nbsp;that promote entrepreneurship and help mentor young innovators. IITH has been very successful in building tie-ups with leading academic institutions around the globe.

IITH enjoys a very special relationship with Japanese universities and industries that goes beyond academic and research collaborations. In fact, some of the iconic buildings in IITH campus will carry the signature of Japanese architecture.

IITH creates a unique holistic ecosystem for education that offers interactive learning, a very flexible academic structure, cutting-edge research, strong industry collaboration, and entrepreneurship. This is an environment which enables students and faculty to translate their dreams into realities.

IIT Hyderabad

Technological interventions are adopted in emerging economies to enable sustainable development and empower marginalized communities at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). Emerging economies are becoming significant contributors in BoP development with the active initiatives from academia-driven organizations engaging in rural development. However, the technological development practice is fragmented and requires unified technology management practices to analyze salient features that lead to a sustainable rural transformation. This study adopts a case-study methodology and obtains primary and secondary data from two distinctive centers of an academia-born organization. The findings enfold three intrinsic characteristics of the technology development process targeted for the BoP sector: the emergence of demand-driven technology, inclusive innovation practices leading towards self-reliance and trends of sustainable green technology. The formative contribution of this research enriches the management of technologies at BoP by connecting the developer's perspective for innovation practice inclined towards knowledge sharing, inclusiveness, empowerment and sustainable development, thus creating a roadmap for effective policy development focusing on the sustainability of BoP technologies in emerging economies. © 2022 World Scientific Publishing Company.

World University root node

Department of Entrepreneurship and Management

International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management

Role of Academic Initiatives for Technology Management at the Base of the Pyramid: Empirical Evidence From India

Appropriate technology’s significance has been growing due to the burgeoning interest in constraint-based innovation that transforms plausible challenges into practical solutions. However, the notion of technological appropriateness in appropriate technology management remains under-explored, following a prescriptive trajectory from earlier studies. This study assesses factors that establish appropriateness in a developing country context using a multi-case design approach. The cases involve both organisations and institutions that are engaged in the design, development, and dissemination of appropriate technologies. The empirical data obtained from the cases are analyzed using an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to determine the appropriateness for the management of appropriate technology. The findings generate four factors that define appropriateness. They include entailing appropriate design for sustainability, participatory mode of development, sustainable rural delivery mechanism, and indigenous knowledge development. The seminal contribution of this study provides a predictive understanding of appropriateness for effective technology functioning at the grassroots. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Technology Analysis and Strategic Management

Determining appropriateness for management of appropriate technology: an empirical study using factor analysis

Appropriate technology has emerged as a critical driver for sustainable development in developing countries where a massive population depends on small and medium-sized businesses. Appropriate technologies are energy-efficient, which corresponds to environmental sustainability. The benefits of appropriate technology may range from providing economic sustainability for availing affordable solutions in a resource-constrained environment to promoting social sustainability by fostering inclusivity of marginalized sections of the society. However, the appropriateness, which is the perceived quality of appropriate technology, largely remains unaddressed in prior research. Therefore, the current study proposes a framework to explore determinants of appropriateness and examine the interplay among them anchored on resource mobilization theory. Four case organizations of a developing country are empirically analyzed to obtain appropriateness factors from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, namely, enterprises, developers, and users. Next, a decision-making technique is applied to derive the cause-effect relationship between the identified factors. The results contribute five factors of appropriateness: technological, socio-economic, organizational, market, and environment to the literature on appropriate technology. The former three factors induce the latter two factors of appropriateness. Understanding the interplay among the indicators from a multi-stakeholder perspective assists the policymakers in facilitating the adoption of appropriate technologies at the grassroots level to achieve sustainable development goals in developing economies. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Journal of Cleaner Production

Analysing appropriateness in appropriate technology for achieving sustainability: A multi-sectorial examination in a developing economy

The potential of Appropriate Technology (AT) development at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) for meeting economic, social, and environmental needs is rarely evaluated in various verticals. This study initially identified fourteen critical enablers and eight barriers to appropriate technology management through a systematic literature review and validated through multi-case studies. The ranking of different enablers and barriers and predicting their priorities were determined through Friedman Test. The analysis resulted in six enablers and five barriers critical to appropriate technology practices. 'Understanding of socio-cultural context,' 'Utilization of local resources,' 'Understandability of technology,' 'Robust design,' and 'Technology Acceptance' were the significant enablers. The significant barriers were 'Technology Transfer,' 'Lack of implementation of local skills and knowledge, 'Behavior Change,' 'Lack of Sensitivity,' and 'Weak Institutional Support.' The findings of this study uncover the importance of enablers and barriers that can help organizations exploit these variables for the effective development and dissemination of appropriate technology in a specific region. © 2022 IEEE.

2022 IEEE Conference on Interdisciplinary Approaches in Technology and Management for Social Innovation, IATMSI 2022

An Empirical Study for Determining and Prioritizing of Enablers and Barriers to Appropriate Technology Management

A tectonic shift in the paradigm of innovation is being witnessed lately at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Although previous studies have been empirical; the approach, processes, practices of innovation have received limited attention at the grassroots. Thus, inclusive innovation comes into the discussion, which is bridging the knowledge gap between innovators, organizations, and the communities at grassroots. The objective of this study is to explore the dynamics and interplay of inclusive innovation under which innovative practice translates to inclusive development using a multi-case design approach. The qualitative study involves primary data from field interviews, and secondary data from documents, online sources, which were analysed following the grounded theory approach. The research findings present five strategic themes which play a significant role in stimulating inclusive innovation: establishing a sense of ownership and responsibility, intensive innovation practices, transformative social learning, maximizing impacts at the grassroots, and capturing psychological aspects. The seminal contribution of this study emphasizes on the central role that organizations must undertake in promoting indigenous knowledge, empathizing with communities, capacity building, and bridging knowledge asymmetry, as prescribed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advocated by the United Nations. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Promise of inclusive innovation: A Re-look into the opportunities at the grassroots

Innovation serves a steppingstone for re-instigating growth in the indigenous industries of developing countries. One such sector which accounts for one of the largest employment generation opportunity in India is the handicraft sector. The informal sector, which includes handicrafts, has been described by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a part of economic activity characterized by certain features like reliance on local available resources and skills, family ownership, small scale operations, labour intensity, traditional technology, skills generally acquired outside school system, unregulated and competitive markets. This study aims at understanding the challenges the Indian handicraft market is facing and highlighting the current practices adopted to tackle them. The handicraft sector today is faced with a lot of challenges ranging from unorganized marketing and inadequate market information to lack of support mechanism for product development. The study adopts a case-based methodology involving primary sources such as field interviews with the key stakeholders of the industry within North Indian region as well as secondary sources including publicly available information about competitive ventures and government interventions. The hub and spoke model is a significantly popular industry tool for dealing with the problems similar to the ones faced currently by the handicraft industry. A similar model was adopted and its compatibility within our problem statement was evaluated. Findings revolved around the fact that how incorporating a simple hub and spoke based model coupled with appropriate technological intervention could address the identified challenges. It also highlights how exchange of information through a digital marketplace can bring about sustainable change in an otherwise ailing industry. We conclude the paper with the proposal of a hub and spoke model custom-made for the North Indian sector, in an attempt to reinvigorate the regional handicraft business through innovative intervention. © 2020 Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited. All rights reserved.

Proceedings of the European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ECIE

Innovation through hub and spoke model: E-commercializing regional india's handicraft industry

Innovation taking at the grassroots level has the ability to furnish bottom-up solutions that acknowledge the local issues, interest by solving problems related to economic, social and environmental situations for underdeveloped communities. The objective of this study is to analyze the innovation management framing and technology adoption and dissemination from a voluntary organization working at the grassroots level in the Indian Subcontinent. The study analyses the local innovation practices and ecosystem, the role played by the local organization in empowerment of rural communities enabling an inclusive development. A case based method was adopted where primary data are taken from interview with the innovators, community members. The study gives an insight into how the innovation management at the grassroots are framed through various mechanism such as learning practices, participatory design, technology transfer. The findings of the study revealed four themes such as Capacity Building, Women Empowerment, Creation of entrepreneurial opportunity, Technology transfer for promoting Sustainability. © 2019 IEEE.

2019 IEEE International Symposium on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, TEMS-ISIE 2019

Practices of innovation management enabling technology adoption and diffusion at the grassroots

Innovation in technology in the last few decades has revolutionized society's ability to solve problems. Answering the call for innovation and management, the concept of appropriate technology is discussed. Appropriate Technology is a small-scaled technology developed by community to cater their needs. The study explores the conceptualization of Appropriate Technology in the era of innovation based on empirical data from a field survey. This study attempts to redefine and relook the tenets of appropriate technology and finding out the factors of appropriateness by analyzing empirical data. The field survey is conducted through close-ended questionnaire and face-to-face interview of 193 people from NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), Government. Officials and students of a technical institution from a state of India. The findings of the study presented three factors of appropriateness namely designing for socio-environment sustainability, localizing design to cost solutions and exploring the market potential, which highlights the importance of positioning appropriate technology and exploiting its perspective to build it a mainstream discipline in technology management and studies. © 2018 IEEE.

IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management

Appropriate Technology and Management for Sustainability

Emerging countries continuously strive to attain economic growth using development in technology as a linchpin. Although globalization has engendered the use of technology but some regions in emerging countries struggle with recurring problems of poverty, unemployment, inequality, and fulfilment of basic needs. This variation in landscape calls for the need to revisit technology, whereby ‘Appropriate Technology’ comes into the discussion, being quite pervasive in third world countries and emerging economies. Even after four decades of appropriate technology movement, there is hardly any systematic literature review. The objective of this study is to revisit the extant literature on appropriate technology through a systematic literature review combined with a case study approach. This study contributes to the scant literature available on appropriate technology by synthesizing discussions in both theory and practice. The findings of this study reveal that appropriate technology is yet to be linked with sustainable development and innovation in the context of emerging economies, and also presents the future agenda of the research. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd