Bricolage

Bricolage is a concept used across anthropology, cultural studies, entrepreneurship, and the arts to describe the making of something new from whatever resources are available. The term comes from the French bricoleur, a handyman or tinker, and from bricole, meaning a patchwork or bits and pieces. In the social sciences, it is associated with improvisation, ad hoc problem solving, and the creative recombination of elements at hand. Claude Lévi-Strauss popularized the term in The Savage Mind (1962), using the bricoleur to describe a thinker who builds with whatever tools are at hand rather than following a predesigned plan.

In cultural theory, bricolage refers to constructing meaning by recombining signs, objects, and genres from different cultural repertoires. It is often contrasted with top-down, designed systems, and is linked to approaches that emphasize process, context, and reinterpretation.

In entrepreneurship, bricolage denotes making do with the resources at hand to pursue opportunities, emphasizing improvisation, networks, and iterative experimentation over large-scale planning. The idea, associated with researchers such as Baker and Nelson, highlights how resource-constrained ventures create value by recombining available assets.

In the arts, bricolage describes works created from found materials, samples, or existing media, recontextualized to offer new meanings. It is closely related to collage and remix practices and is widely used to discuss contemporary art, design, and popular culture.