Transforming water into wine: Environmental bricolage for entrepreneurs

Abstract

The theory of bricolage in the entrepreneurial realm requires further refinement and development in unexplored entrepreneurial contexts. The analysis strives to elaborate on this theory, putting bricolage into the hands of environmental entrepreneurs which deal with distinctive natural resource constraints. This paper is aimed at understanding how entrepreneurs acquire and combine resources in a natural resource-scarce and exploited environment. Through a qualitative inductive study of 20 entrepreneurs belonging to the Italian wine industry, the authors shed light not only on basic constructs of bricolage literature, but also on three further unique processes associated with environmental entrepreneurship – environmental gain, sensibilisation and network establishment –, thus arguing the existence of a specific bricolage framework: environmental bricolage. The findings highlight that bricolage not only relates to young ventures but also occurs in later phases of the entrepreneurial process. The research conducted also offers practical implication for helping environmental entrepreneurs understand the importance of bricolage as a mean to create new resources, achieving greater environmental and social impacts.