Construction of Frugal Innovation Path in the Context of Digital Transformation: A Study Based on NCA and QCA

With the continuous advancement of digital globalization, enterprises need to seek development opportunities in the context of diversification and resource shortage. Frugal innovation provides a new way for enterprises to realize social value and create a win-win situation. Based on 113 enterprises’ survey data, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and necessary condition analysis (NCA) are used to explore the multiple concurrency factors and causality mechanisms of digital transformation, organizational resilience, learning from failure and design thinking for frugal innovation. It is found that: (1) Digital transformation, organizational resilience, internal learning from failure, external learning from failure and design thinking cannot effectively stimulate frugal innovation alone, and linkage matching of multiple antecedents is needed to promote frugal innovation. (2) There are three paths to producing high frugal innovation, namely, external learning from failure and design thinking driving under digital transformation learning from failure driving under design thinking guidance, organizational resilience driving under digital transformation. (3) There are two paths to produce non-high frugal innovation, which are asymmetrical with high frugal innovation path. Our results are helpful for the study of digital transformation and frugal innovation at the enterprise level. In addition, our research results also provide practical solutions and a theoretical basis for enterprises to carry out frugal innovation activities under the new economic normal.