A bricolage perspective on service innovation

Abstract

Service innovation is often viewed as a process of accessing the necessary resources, (re)combining them, and converting them into new services. The current knowledge on success factors for service innovation, such as formalized new service development (NSD) processes, predominantly comes from studying large firms with a relatively stable resource base. However, this neglect situations in which organizations face severe resource constraints. This paper argues that under such constraints, a formalized new service development process could be counter-productive and a bricolage perspective might better explain service innovation in resourceconstrained environments. In this conceptual paper, we propose that four critical bricolage capabilities (addressing resource scarcity actively, making do with what is available, improvising when recombining resources, and networking with external partners) influence service innovation outcomes. Empirical illustrations from five organizations substantiate our conceptual development. Our discussion leads to a framework and four testable propositions that can guide further service research.

It is not a panacea! The conditional effect of bricolage in SME opportunity exploitation

“…For example, it helps firms to restructure capability (Banerjee and Campbell, 2009) and innovate despite resource limitations (Senyard et al, 2014). In this respect, there are relevant studies of business model innovation (Guo et al, 2016), service innovation (Witell et al, 2017), and new product development (Wu et al, 2017). Empirical studies have also suggested a positive relation between the use of bricolage and the potential of firms to survive in their early years (Stenholm and Renko, 2016).…”

“…Previous studies recommend bricolage, defined as making do by reusing and recombining of resources that are at hand (Baker and Nelson, 2005), as a feasible solution to this dilemma. SMEs use bricolage to reconstruct extant resources and build creative combinations that in turn materialize recognizable opportunities (Witell et al, 2017). Empirical evidence indicates that bricolage does contribute to firm innovation (e.g., Banerjee and Campbell, 2009;Senyard et al, 2014) and survival, subject to constraints (e.g., Stenholm and Renko, 2016;Sunduramurthy et al, 2016).…”

Comparing the configured causal antecedents of exploration and exploitation: a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis

“…Through the process of combining existing but disparate resources for new purposes, entrepreneurial bricolage serves as a mechanism for innovation, bringing about new "services" from existing resources (Senyard et al 2014;Salunke et al 2013;Witell et al 2017). A large proportion of the literature highlights its effects on exploratory innovation, with less attention on exploitative innovation (Guo et al 2016;Ravishankar and Gurca 2016).…”

A design-thinking perspective on capability development

“…(Simon, 1996, xii) 2.5 New Service Development New Service Development (NSD) differs from NPD in a number of key respects. Firstly, although a structured development process is a success factor for both (Storey et al, 2016), the rigidity of NPD processes may be counter-productive for NSD, particularly where there are resource constraints or uncertainty introduced by customer interaction (Witell et al, 2017). A second, related point is that unlike NPD, NSD often relies on combining existing technologies rather than new ones created through scientific research (den Hertog et al, 2010).…”