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A bricolage perspective on technological innovation in emerging markets

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-11-13, 13:38 authored by Andrei P. Gurca, M.N. Ravishankar
Product innovation strategies of emerging market companies are increasingly challenging conventional wisdom. Drawing on a qualitative case study of Mahindra Reva, the only electric vehicle producer in India, the paper explores how a bricolage strategy enabled a resource-constrained emerging market firm to deliver affordable, innovative and high-tech products with minimal capital investments. The findings of the study illustrate how multiple forms of bricolage can be implemented and managed at organizational and inter-organizational levels. They show how different bricolage activities relate to different stages of the new product development process and further, highlight the complementarities between bricolage and engineering activities. The paper argues that bricolage, which is typically regarded as a behavioural trait or skill that allows entrepreneurs and innovators to operate in challenging environments, can also be a carefully planned and executed strategy conducive to innovation. Thus, it suggests that a cost-effective bricolage strategy can underpin emerging market companies’ development of discontinuity-creating and market disrupting technology products.

History

School

  • Business and Economics

Department

  • Business

Published in

IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management

Volume

63

Issue

1

Pages

53 - 66

Citation

GURCA, A. and RAVISHANKAR, M.N., 2015. A bricolage perspective on technological innovation in emerging markets. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 63(1), pp.53-66.

Publisher

© IEEE

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015-11-19

Notes

© IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.

ISSN

1558-0040

Language

  • en