Bricolage as a way to make use of input from users

1. Bricolage as a way to make use of input from users Lars Fuglsang, 2011

2. Agenda • Background • Bricolage definition • Case studies • Home care in Amager • Ticket Office • Development Partnership • Conclusions

3. Background (1/2) • Innovation has not one precise definition. • Innovation is considered in real-life circumstances. • Innovation is created incrementally with employees involvement. • User-based service innovation: • ‘bricolage’ employment, where employees solve problems in cooperation with users here and now; • difficult to understand how innovation can be derived from occupational practice in stepwise manner. .

4. Background (2/2) • Bricolage is referred to practice-based theory. • Practice-based theory is linked with the concepts: • Individuation is “the process whereby the individual is constituted qua integrated unit” (Styhre, 2008b); • Meta-stability is temporal condition which is changing with actor’s activity and interactions. • Focus on practical implementation; • User is not a source of innovation as such. .

5. Bricolage definition (1/2) • Bricolage is a problem-solving activity through which user relationships and user-based innovation can be individuated and become stabilized incrementally. • Describes how changes occur in practice. • Solving the problem here and now with at hand resources. • Reasons for bricolage effectiveness: • Complexity and pluralism of modern companies; • People want to make changes through their jobs and avoid changes which they do not understand. .

6. Bricolage definition (2/2) • Bricolage was considered in a wide range of studies: • E.g., in 1989 explaining how teachers’ work proceeds in an often unprincipled way by improvisation and using the resources at hand. • Bricolage can be considered as: • Stepwise innovation process in itself; • Input for company’s more formal innovation activities. .

7. Case studies • Three different cases, but all • Include some service innovation; • Involve user in innovation process. • Conduction of interviews with employees and managers. • Goal to describe: • Incrementalism of innovation; • Bricolage role; • Whether incrementalism and bricolage results in meta-stability in innovation process. .

8. Home Care in Amager: Bricolage by front-line staff . • Incrementalism • Home carers make small adjustments to home care in collaboration with users; • A range of reforms are introduced by management. • Bricolage • True bricolage takes place when home carers solve problems using resources at hand in old people homes. • Bricolage is crucial for service provision. • Bricolage is also used when reforms are to be introduced. • Meta-stability • Bricolage is considered as interactive way, in which the organization, its rules and procedures become meta-stable functional units.

9. Ticket Office: Bricolage by entrepreneurial management (1/2) • Ticket Office – travel agency that sells tickets and hotel rooms to other travel agencies using online booking system. • Innovation is based on development of technological resources and ICT expertise. .

10. Ticket Office: Bricolage by entrepreneurial management (2/2) • Incrementalism • The booking system was already mature technology when it was further developed by Ticket Office; • The development was done in small steps. • Bricolage • Is not true bricolage, because it does not use resources at hand. • However, ‘Resources at hand may include ‘resources that are available cheaply or for free, often because judge them to be useless or substandard’ (Baker and Nelson, 2005). • Meta-stability • Ongoing creation of meta-stability of user’s needs. .

11. Development Partnership: Bricolage by network governance (1/2) • Development Partnership is a public-private innovation network between Danish municipality (Gribskov) and three providers of services for old people including one public and two private ones. • Collaboration regarding development and innovation in elderly care facilitated by Momentum. • Firstly Momentum’s steering committee tried to come up with new ideas for service innovations. After 2005, Momentum became more market oriented and project organized. • Developed projects: • An examination of the concept care among old people. • Social project that attempted to involve volunteers in care. • A project of ‘differentiation’ that identified positive examples of service user differentiation based on staff and user experience. .

12. Development Partnership: Bricolage by network governance (2/2) • Incrementalism • Projects apply incremental innovations. • Bricolage • Not all projects have bricolage (e.g., Care Academy); • Spread of knowledge from the projects had the character of bricolage; • The way the projects developed and used by the companies specify planned bricolage. • Meta-stability • Relationships among the service providers and the user as well as some service usersare meta-stable. .

13. Conclusions • User-base service innovation can take place as bricolage. • User-planned innovation usually is not intentional and well-planned activity. • Deep involvement of users in innovation process. • Use of resources at hand. • Bricolage can: • Directly create service innovations • Help to identify opportunities for further user-based innovations. .

14. Thank you for attention! Template user guide