Women Entrepreneurship: Business Models for Frugal Innovation in an Emerging Economy

This study aims to develop an Alternative Business model Framework (ABMF) for frugal innovation. Based on women entrepreneur’s feminist view in the context of an emerging economy, particularly in Ethiopia. Achieving this goal requires improving the existing Business Model Framework (BMF) and Business Model Canvas (BMC). An explanatory multiple-case study design was preferred for this study. The data was collected over three months; the first interview was on 4th August 2022, and the last was on 5th November 2022. All 12 interviews were conducted through Google Meet and Skype video calls. For further clarification, the follow-up interview was conducted for three participants between 28th December 2022 to 30th January 2023. The research findings reveal that Almost all 12 participants' competitive advantage stems mainly from the infrastructure management component of the business model framework BMF. In other words, almost all participant has high-level Entrepreneurial Bricolage. That is the main reason to use the term (Entrepreneurial Bricolage) title for the left side of ABMF and capitalize on this concept. For instance, the BMIC assumes that the Key resource for the business is available in the business environment and encourages to assess and pick the best resources that have a key role in building competitive advantage. However, it's not applicable for women entrepreneurs due to gender roles, the business environment trend, and many other contextual factors. The finding reveals that none of them start a business and run frugal innovation based on external resource assessment. Almost all the current study participants have not had a chance to choose between the key and ordinary resources. They are forced to conduct a baseness in available resources in hand . Thus, the proposed framework has fundamentally different assumptions regarding resources. It assumes that whatever resource they have is considered a key resource, and there is no need to seek or wait from other parties. So, based on this philosophy, the ABMIF strives to tap women's potential. It emphasizes exploiting this unused potential, focusing on finding a way to release it. In other words, using their in-hand resource Bricolagly. Instead of operating an external resource-acquiring strategy as BMIC suggested . Keywords: Alternative Business model Framework; Women Entrepreneurs; Frugal Innovation; Emerging economies; Ethiopia