How entrepreneurial bricolage driven frugal innovation tackles socio-economic hardships: a case study of international new venture's growth in Africa

Purpose This study examines how international new ventures (INVs) from emerging markets deploy entrepreneurial bricolage to achieve frugal innovation and growth in resource-constrained African contexts. Focusing on a leading emerging-market new venture, this study explores adaptive resource recombination during market entry, expansion, and leapfrogging stages in response to institutional voids and infrastructural deficits. Design/methodology/approach We adopt an inductive qualitative approach and conduct a longitudinal case study of the selected company's evolution since 2008. Our multisource dataset includes in-depth interviews with six key participants, including top and middle managers, key employees, and key customers, alongside secondary data such as media reports, academic literature, archival records and documentary materials, and field observations. Findings The findings reveal a three-stage process model of new venture growth in Africa. First, opportunity-oriented bricolage enables product and service innovations during market entry, supporting survival growth. Second, customer-oriented bricolage facilitates value-chain innovations during the expansion stage, advancing developmental growth. Finally, strategic-oriented bricolage drives ecosystem-level innovations during the leapfrogging stage, enabling integrated growth. Originality/value This study enriches entrepreneurship theory by developing an integrative process model that clarifies the dynamic relationships among entrepreneurial bricolage, frugal innovation, and new venture growth in resource-constrained African markets. It extends frugal innovation scholarship by explicitly linking specific bricolage modes to product-, value-chain-, and ecosystem-level innovations, producing an integrated growth model suited to resource-constrained contexts. It also contributes to international entrepreneurship (IE) literature by explaining a non-gradual, adaptation-driven growth pathway for INVs operating in Africa.