Competing through service innovation: The role of bricolage and entrepreneurship in project-oriented firms

By Sandeep Salunke, J. Weerawardena, Janet R. Mccoll-Kennedy. 2013

299 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The criticality of service innovation in building and sustaining competitive advantage is gaining increasing recognition in the marketplace. Using empirical data from US and Australian project-oriented firms, the study uses a multi-staged multi-method research program to demonstrate how entrepreneurial service firms strategically combine resources at hand (bricolage) to innovate and stay ahead of rivals. The research shows that service entrepreneurship (SE) and bricolage influence two forms of service innovation (interactive and supportive), which in turn is associated with sustained competitive advantage (SCA). The results suggest that SE and bricolage indirectly relate to SCA through service innovation. The findings offer novel insights into how project-oriented service firms engage in innovation. In short, the findings encourage the “making do by combining resources at hand” as higher levels of entrepreneurial bricolage are associated with higher levels of interactive and supportive innovation enabling SCA, suggesting a new model.

Subfields: Management of Technology and Innovation, Marketing, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aff413299abae16ebbc78b63cce2730b17d2e97c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Management of Technology and Innovation

1. Per Ola Kristensson
2. Heiko Gebauer
3. Wafa Hammedi
4. Lars Witell

In Marketing

1. Hannah Snyder
2. Lars Witell
3. Anders Gustafsson
4. Heiko Gebauer
5. Wafa Hammedi
6. Per Ola Kristensson
7. Paul W. Fombelle
8. Lia Patrício

In Strategy and Management

1. Lars Witell
2. Anders Gustafsson
3. E. Jaakkola
4. Per Ola Kristensson
5. Paulina Papastathopoulou
6. C. Storey
7. Heiko Gebauer
8. Wafa Hammedi

Citations in the corpus

• Success Factors for Service Innovation: A Meta‐Analysis (2016, background): “…strategic competitive advantages accruing from service innovation included the establishment of new markets, the attraction and retention of potential and existing customers, increased customer loyalty, and learning (de Brentani et al., 2010; Lievens and Moenaert, 2000c; Salunke et al., 2013).”
• Identifying categories of service innovation: A review and synthesis of the literature (2016, background): “Schumpeter (1934) proposes several different innovation forms: introduction of a new good, introduction of a new production means, and the discovery of a new source of rawmaterials, newmarkets, or new organizations.”
• A bricolage perspective on service innovation (2017, background): “…three items such as (i) the ability to combine resources in ways that challenge conventional business practices, (ii) to combine resources in a manner that extracts value from under-utilized resources, and (iii) to deploy resources in ways that allow for innovative solutions (Salunke et al., 2013).”