• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.170-191
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• 2017

Inclusive innovation refers to different types and forms of innovation activities or performance by which we can get more for lesser cost and which could cater and meet the needs and demands of more people. The essence of inclusive innovation is to help poor, marginalized and underprivileged sections of society to improve their livelihoods and enable them to climb up the socio-economic ladder. In the current phase of economic slowdown, increasing unemployment and inequalities, World Bank, OECD and various governments are turning towards inclusive innovation as a new source of optimism or even as a new innovation strategy. Whilst it is being reframed or packaged as a novel or a new strategy, one can trace its historical roots to the AT movement and the Gandhian ideas of economy and society in the 1940s and 1950s. These ideas have inspired and influenced a range of individuals, institutions and civil society groups in inclusive innovation.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2017

The essence of inclusive innovation is to serve poor, marginalized and underprivileged sections of society to improve their livelihoods and enable them to climb up the socio-economic ladder. In this article, we explore the contemporary Indian landscape. There is a diversity of institutions and institutional approaches, multiple methodologies and goals in promoting inclusive innovations in this landscape. There are grassroots innovation institutions. All these institutions and groups have demonstrated how to improve the living conditions of poor people and enhance their income. They have developed different methodologies of inclusive innovation to intervene, build capacities and capabilities of poor people towards bridging informal and formal sectors of economy. Indian landscape can now boast of some successful models and a "social laboratory" for inclusive innovation. The challenge, however, remains to replicate and multiply these models to impact other sectors of Indian informal economy.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.39-61
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• 2020

The Chinese Communist Party's 'with-Chinese-characteristics' discourse proclaims its superiority in reflecting people's genuine needs without poisonous partisan politics, as in Western democracies. The Party's Consultative Democracy is key to this superiority. To evaluate Consultative Democracy in Contemporary China from a perspective of popular sovereignty, which is the essential purpose of every kinds of democracy, this research looks into Consultative Democracy from two dimensions: theoretical dimension and institutional dimension. Theoretically, CCP's Consultative Democracy seeks its theoretical sources from their traditional thought as well as from Marxism, and especially emphasizes CCP's leadership to fulfill the consultation results. And through the analysis of various field investigations, we find that there are some prominent problems in grass-roots society's institutional mechanism for Consultative Democracy, such as insufficient connection between institutional innovation and existing legal system, inefficient consultation, insufficient representation of consultative subjects and weak motive force for sustainable development. By legitimizing certain groups or individuals as representatives in their consultative process, CCP can be de-legitimize by containing, dividing or denouncing others so that critics can be co-opted, neutralized or isolated. The CCP's consultative and representational processes are different from taking policy inputs as dialogue or negotiation as in democracies, it is a dynamic, largely one-way process of enforcement and direction with a clear political agenda: maintaining Party hegemony.