A field study of 29 resource-constrained firms that varied dramatically in their responses to similar objective environments is used to examine the process by which entrepreneurs in resource-poor environments were able to render unique services by recombining elements at hand for new purposes that challenged institutional definitions and limits. We found that Lévi-Strauss's concept of bricolage—making do with what is at hand—explained many of the behaviors we observed in small firms that were able to create something from nothing by exploiting physical, social, or institutional inputs that other firms rejected or ignored. We demonstrate the socially constructed nature of resource environments and the role of bricolage in this construction. Using our field data and the existing literature on bricolage, we advance a formal definition of entrepreneurial bricolage and induce the beginnings of a process model of bricolage and firm growth. Central to our contribution is the notion that companies engaging in bricolage refuse to enact the limitations imposed by dominant definitions of resource environments, suggesting that, for understanding entrepreneurial behavior, a constructivist approach to resource environments is more fruitful than objectivist views.

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This essay contrasts a perspective that places an excessive focus on technology businesses and growth with a view of entrepreneurship that embraces its heterogeneity. We challenge a taken–for–granted belief that only certain kinds of entrepreneurship might lead to wealth and job creation and additionally suggest that these two outcomes (wealth and job creation) need to be placed within a broader context of reasons, purposes, and values for why and how entrepreneurship emerges. We suggest that a wider and nondiscriminatory perspective on what constitutes entrepreneurship will lead to better theory and more insights that are relevant to the phenomenon.

Shane and Venkataraman's Discovery, Evaluation and Exploitation entrepreneurship framework ignores issues central to comparative international entrepreneurship (IE) because of unnecessarily under-socialized assumptions regarding entrepreneurial opportunities and the individuals who discover them. To better promote comparative IE research, we develop a Comparative Discovery, Evaluation and Exploitation framework (CDEE), which takes as a starting point that individuals motivated by diverse goals enact market opportunities in a variety of social settings. Building on this characterization, the paper explores how and why processes of opportunity discovery, evaluation and exploitation vary across and within nations, as well as the implications of these differences. Journal of International Business Studies (2005), 36, 492–504. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400153

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