A Bottom-Up Perspective on Innovations: Mobilizing Knowledge and Social Capital Through Innovative Processes of Bricolage

In: Administration & society, Volume 40, Issue 1, p. 54-78

Abstract

The article focuses on a kind of innovation trajectory, based on the reemployment of assets that belong to the legacy of the past. Thus, it argues for the importance of utilizing know-how and social capital accumulated over the years in organizations' efforts to launch a new course. The concept of bricolage appears especially clarifying in throwing light on innovations emerging through bottom-up processes, utilizing what is at hand or embedded locally. However important breakthrough and pioneering entrepreneurs might be, what really matters in the long run is more incremental processes of problem solving. In elaborating this view on innovation, the article addresses organizational devolution and partnership. According to the article, top-down steering or strategic determination do not suffice to account for the processes underlying the application of these tools. Innovative processes of bricolage based on a bottom-up mobilization appear pivotal for releasing creativity.