Since the mid-20th century, India has forged both the concept and practice of appropriate/frugal technology. It has been followed later by other Asian emerging economies, all making innovative contributions to green and sustainable development both domestically and globally. Appropriate technology has been disseminated worldwide as a concept and in practice under various terminologies such as adaptive technology, accessible and cheap technology, community technology, low-cost technology, intermediary technology, .... It was originally inspired by India since the anti-colonial campaigns led by Gandhi and Nehru, and was further disseminated by Schumacher’s worldwide bestseller publication Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (1973), and more recently by Prahalad and his famous book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (2005). Before and since the turn of the century, innovations in appropriate/frugal technology and sustainable development have been diffused by rising Asian emerging economies, China and India taking the lead. Of course, the OECD economies have also started to contribute, and more than once in partnership with emerging countries. This paper is inspired by the author’s scientific research supervision of a 2021-2024 national research program dealing with appropriate technology for international sustainability development sponsored by the Swiss Federal Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) and the International Office of the Swiss University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO).