According to the European Innovation Scoreboard, United Kingdom belongs to the group of Innovation Leaders (at the fifth position in the group). Attractive research system and human resources are the strongest innovation dimensions, while intellectual assets and innovation-friendly environment are the weakest ones.

United Kingdom and other countries taking part in the Frugal Innovation project according to the European Innovation Scoreboard 2018.

Our project team conducted research in their countries in order to find out the specifics of frugal innovation market. A piece of research was conducted in the United Kingdom.

Are you interested in hearing more about frugal innovations developed in the UK along with which frugal solutions are popular with British consumers? Then keep reading!

Peek Vision is a solution that enables diagnosis of eyesight problems using smartphones. Thanks to a special software and high-resolution camera. A smartphone can help people who live a great distance away from eye clinics or cannot afford eye treatment.

Apps and hardware developed by Peek Vision can be easily used in homes, schools and communities where the access to conventional eye treatment is limited or unavailable. This way appropriate treatment and resources can be allocated efficiently. Peek Vision has conducted many eye screenings in third world countries.

Raspberry Pi is a small and affordable computer developed in the UK to promote learning programming. The idea was to support teaching computer science in developing countries by creating a single circuit board, with microprocessor, memory, input/output and other features of typical computers.

With the sales figure of over 12,5 million computers sold in five years, Raspberry Pi is, after Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows PCs, the third best-selling general purpose computer ever.

Azimo is an online remittance service which enables the transfer money via the Azimo website or smartphone app to various countries worldwide at affordable price. The trasfers are available to more than 190 countries in 80 different currencies. The mission was to help migrants who work in the UK to transfers money to their families for a low-cost. It can be even 5 times cheaper than traditional banks and offline money transfer providers.

Poverty in the United Kingdom

According to the statistics from 2012-2013, a median personal income was £21000 a year (€23427), therefore United Kingdom is perceived as a wealth country. According to Poverty and Social Exclusion^[1], there are 9 per cent of the population living below the state’s poverty standard, and another 23 per cent on the margins of the standards. CIA^[2] place the UK at 133 position (out of 177 countries) with a 15% of population living below poverty line.

Source: European Innovation Scoreboard 2018 – Executive summary, European Commission, 21/06/2018
https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/30201

[1] http://www.poverty.ac.uk

[2] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook