Sustainable disruptive innovations: grassroots innovations for social and circular entrepreneurs

Grassroots innovations (GIs) are bottom-up solutions implemented by the community to achieve sustainable development. Although this type of innovation can bring a disruptive effect on a social level, a small number of papers have analyzed this aspect. On the lens of the five qualities of catalytic innovations (Brem & Wolfram, 2014), this article brings a contribution to the fields of GIs as disruptive innovations. The disruptive effect of GIs is analysed via a case study of an Italian food community named Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale (solidarity purchase groups). Research findings show that a GI innovation can be considered as a specific kind of disruptive innovation. Furthermore, this paper brings two important contributions. First of all, it wants to demonstrate that it is possible to build innovative projects beyond the mainstream approach. Secondly, it wants to underline how GIs can introduce a radical change from a social point of view to the economic aspects.