Entrepreneurial bricolage and innovation: the double-edged sword of knowledge diversity

ABSTRACT

Innovation is crucial for firm growth but difficult to achieve, especially for resource-constrained firms. The extant literature suggests entrepreneurial bricolage is an adequate action for firms in a resource-constrained environment. Most studies argue that resource-constrained firms engaging in bricolage achieve innovation; however, some studies raise limitations and downsides of entrepreneurial bricolage. Empirical evidence of entrepreneurial bricolage’s impact has resulted in mixed results with no conclusive findings. This study proposes a contingency framework to clarify the impact of entrepreneurial bricolage on innovation exploratory and exploitative by examination of the moderating role of knowledge diversity referring to research on entrepreneurship and innovation management. Our analysis of 172 firms of the cultural and creative industry in Taiwan reveals resource-constrained firms utilising entrepreneurial bricolage simultaneously pursuing exploratory and exploitative innovation with two different conditions of high knowledge diversity. More specifically, knowledge diversity has a positive moderating effect on the influence of entrepreneurial bricolage on exploratory innovation, but it has a negative moderating effect on the influence of entrepreneurial bricolage on exploitative innovation. In addition, this study finds that entrepreneurial bricolage can help resource-constrained firms in generating new knowledge to explore and exploit opportunities from the available resources, but this can succeed only to a certain extent.

KEYWORDS:

• Entrepreneurial bricolage
• exploratory innovation
• exploitative innovation
• knowledge diversity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This research references the Standards for Identifying Small and Medium-sized Enterprises as set by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. An SME is defined as an enterprise employing fewer than 200 regular staff or with a paid-in capital not exceeding NT$100 million.

2. A total of 63,250 CCI firms in 2017 was announced in Taiwan Cultural and Creative Annual Report issued by the Ministry of Culture.

3. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for this helpful comment.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [MOST 109-2410-H-241-001-SSS].