Innovation and entrepreneurship are important yet understudied pathways in the technical and professional communication (TPC) literature for studying how underresourced people enact agency given weak or absent access to institutions. Despite TPC’s social justice turn and continued internationalization of research and practice, little is known about how economically underresourced entrepreneurs work in the majority world. Drawing on multisited, ethnographic research in communities of such grassroots entrepreneurs in India, the author inquires into the processes by which innovation and entrepreneurship are practiced in extrainstitutional settings of the majority world. Popular and scholarly reports paint a simplistic picture when they claim that grassroots entrepreneurs are resourceful, resilient bricoleurs who possess deep, contextual knowledge of complex problems for which they improvise affordable solutions. Challenging this homogenizing view, the author shares rich accounts of how such individuals navigate the complex sociocultural contexts that constrain and enable bricolage on institutional margins.

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Information and communication technologies are being used by various countries to provide faster and transparent services to their citizens through e-government initiatives. A large population in developing countries remain deprived of these services due to lack of skills, training and infrastructure. Local community intermediaries with necessary skills are employed to provide these services to beneficiaries. The purpose of this study was to identify and prioritise the challenges faced by intermediaries in adopting e-government technology. Quality management tools of list reduction, affinity diagram and Pareto chart were used for this purpose. Utilising quality management tools is an unconventional approach to problem solving in public administration sector. The six identified priority areas were lack of infrastructure, device hardware design, process design, sales people errors, government support and software design. This research will help policy makers and government agencies to improve technology dissemination for easier adoption of existing as well as new e-government initiatives.