Bricolage — a familiar ‘unknown species’ and how it influences our everyday lives
I guess, not everyone knows the word ‘bricolage’.
Although it received quite a wide publicity across various disciplines, it’s not like one comes across this term in a daily life, which may be a neglect. The concept itself certainly deserves closer attention.
Bricolage as an idea and ‘social metaphor’ was first suggested by Levi-Strauss in 1967 within the field of anthropology to describe the process ‘making do with resources at hand’ in a most literal sense. This penetrated into other research areas, becoming more abstract along the way, though keeping the main thought. Interestingly, bricolage might define both the research design and research process at the same time, as scientists themselves are prone to tapping into whatever insignificant and seemingly irrelevant pool of means they have to deliver the result.
In a wider sense, bricolage is a manifestation of creativity. Bricoleurs — people, groups or organisations (which itself is a development of an initial idea, as according to Levi-Strauss, bricoleur is ‘alone’) — use something in their possession or what they can get for free, including ‘trash’ (or at least resources, which everyone else doesn’t perceive as of any value), to achieve their goals. Which makes the concept quite tempting for the business thinking. Indeed, what can be more deliciously cost-saving — down to zero! — than discovering new depths in yesterday’s scrap?
In fact, numerous enterprises actually are actively involved in bricolage, consciously or not. Scarcity of resources is the main reason, I’m positive that no company on the globe, even one of the richest ones, can afford endless means of production and operations, something is always lacking: qualified workforce, materials, financing, etc. Sometimes it’s about exploiting employees’ skills far beyond their job descriptions instead of hiring new ones, which may come costly, or creating tightly knit network of customers-friends-suppliers, whose status easily shifts between the ‘modes’ in relation to the organisation. Friends become customers through personal acquaintance with company founders or staff, counterparties become personally involved and may actually start using company’s products or services, etc.
Startups can actually go harder on bricolage, taking into account that they are really struggling more resource-wise. Founder’s sister may design a logo, because she did graphic design or just is really good with digital graphics. Founders themselves learn basics of web design or business planning not to pay someone from the outside to do these. Or the first deliveries are done using ‘CEO’s’ bike/scooter/car, whatever. I guess, the pattern is pretty obvious.
But what some researchers discovered, that there are several types to bricolaging activities, and they are not in fact equally contributing to the company’s growth. Indeed, as attractive as the concept of ‘creating something out of nothing’ may seem, it has some dangers, which are not clear straight away. When firm’s strategy is all about bricolage in every single aspect of its operations, this inventive behaviour, on the contrary, starts holding it back.
The problem is, that when an organisation becomes obsessed with making do with existing means across all the spheres, it stops evolving at the same time. Getting resources cheaply or for free creates comfortable environment, where the firm doesn’t really have to apply more effort to exist on day-to-day basis, so why bother? This may result in terminating the attempts to acquire higher quality resources, which both devaluates the product or service and inhibits development of the company.
Thus, bricolage needs to be taken in therapeutic amounts and — like acupuncture — to be concentrated in ‘sensible points’ to affect the performance of the entire firm positively without falling into self-reinforcing pattern. Bricolage is a powerful tool, while it’s used within the functions, which are not crucial for the company’s competitive advantage, therefore, helping to save precious resources to breakthrough in really important areas. When you have a product it makes sense to dedicate the best efforts to prototyping or continuously improving the quality, while the delivery can actually be done using your parents’ car, should they be content with that.
However, enough with the business side, it’s more or less clear. What was really interesting for me is to realise that one can also be bricolaging — with varying degree of success — in personal and social life. And the general rules mentioned above apply as well. Too much of the thing — no matter how one admires his/her inventiveness — would lock a person inside a cosy cocoon with little to none incentives to move out of the comfort zone.
It’s always fun to get something for free. Food and drinks at events and fairs; pens, shopping bags and bottle openers at promotions; cosmetics samples with magazines, etc. A nice surprise and a bit of good mood for the day. But when the person — and I mean individuals with enough disposable income here — starts to build the whole existence around such events and promotions, such passion starts becoming unhealthy. The art of fishing for the events with the sole aim not to pay for the beer ever undeniably demonstrates a certain degree of inventiveness and resourcefulness. But is the goal worth the means, time and effort in the first place, dedicated to sneaking around and robbing a person from much more interesting and productive, yet more expensive, activities.
The point is that the process of bricolage — as well as falling into self-reinforcing pattern of continuous making do with existing means — can refer almost in the same way to people’s lives as to firms’ behaviour. Once one begins to take pride in the outstanding creativity he or she applies to lead a decent lifestyle by using only whatever is available at hand (usually of obviously lower quality), the growth is inhibited if not terminated completely. But the good news is, no one should abandon this technique completely. Be it business, science, arts or social life, the tool is too useful to be neglected entirely.
The mentioned research on bricolage conducted in entrepreneurial environment, shows that actually, while some organisations readily dive into ‘resourceful improvisation’ in each sphere of their operations, others are more picky when it comes to what they can save on — so-called ‘parallel’ and ‘selective’ bricolage respectively. So the latter category is all about sparing the scarce finances where possible to inject these into points essential for the company growth.
In addition to previous examples, digital company can save on renting the office with focus on finding the best people from the start. Food producer may ask friends to help with establishing the place but cannot save any costs on branding and marketing. When the firm understands that some areas of development require only the highest quality resources it can possibly get at any given moment, being involved in bricolage in fact adds fuel to its growth!
The interviews I myself did with local startups on business creativity, showed them being quite sober about using whatever is available cheaply or for free. At some point every firm — although the pool of respondents was quite limited, I must admit — realised, which functions were crucial for market success, and invested heavily into them.
Makes sense in business, right? And in creating objects of art, both tangible and intangible, conducting research and applying social policies. But after watching people for some time, after I became armed with proper knowledge and wording, I started to notice signs of ‘personal’ bricolage, sometimes quite damaging for self-development, as mentioned above. And also seeing the ways of improvement.
As much as a firm, or an artistic creation, or a scientific paper crowning the research well-done, individual deserves to set the standards high for the results of their activities and invest significant amounts of time, money and effort into personal development. Learning bricolage can never hurt, but this — and other — type of creativity cannot replace a purpose in one’s life. Useful tools in the kit but never the idol on the altar of ambitions, which it very quickly limits to itself.
