Innovation is the lifeblood of any business, which made a recent article in the Wall Street Journal sticks in my mind.

Most of us would imagine that the most innovative minds in the emerging markets of China and India would be found in the financial centres of Mumbai or Shanghai, but, as students at the Institute of Management in Ahmedabad have been finding out, it sometimes pays to look beyond the obvious.

The Honeybee Network is an online database of rural innovations that, according to the man who runs it, Prof. Anil K. Gupta, has ambitions of becoming the Wikipedia of grassroots inventions. But the professor’s grandiose plans aren’t to be sniffed at – since 1988 Honeybee has catalogued over 70,000 innovations by inventors in rural India, and has facilitated meetings between these most unlikely inventors and entrepreneurs with the cash to take the ideas forward.

Ranging from traditional herbal treatments to a ploughing device that can be attached to the back of a motorbike, these rural innovators have the potential to change the way many of the world’s biggest companies think.

Mr. Gupta’s Network is now working closely with Indian businesses, and the man himself is determined to show that the country’s less developed communities can be viewed as a source of product ideas and, in some cases, can prove invaluable business partners.

"We don't want a system where you first create a lot of growth and try to create a lot of CSR [corporate social-responsibility] programs as a nod to the poor; you include them as stakeholders right up front," Gupta tells the WSJ.

The idea has now gone global, with similar networks now operating in Tianjin University in China and the Genesis Institute in Rio de Janeiro. Both of which are proving as successful in their new locations as the original project has been in India.

So, the message appears to be clear. When it comes to innovation, the answers aren’t always to be found in the most obvious places - sometimes it pays not just to think outside the box, but to leave the box far behind.