In the two and half decades of its existence, the Honey Bee Network (HBN) has initiated and spawned many efforts to highlight the untapped potential of grassroots innovators in alleviating poverty and generating sustainable development. However, it is important to introspect, debate, analyse and improve upon the limitations of the Network and how to best serve the grassroots innovators and traditional knowledge holders. The first International Conference on Creativity and Innovation at the Grassroots (ICCIG) was held in 1997. The ideas exchanged on this platform gave rise to Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN) in 1997. In 15 years, though, the global understanding on the matter had increased, there were areas where much was still expected. Some concepts needed to be understood and debated. Hence, the second ICCIG Conference was organised at Tianjin (Dec 3-5, 2012), China and Ahmedabad (Dec 7-8, 2012), India. The Conference aimed at gauging the state-of-the-art, reinforcing the Network’s values, and consolidating the lessons learned over the last 24 years.
