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With top-down models of innovation failing to address the entrenched problems of healthcare, policy-makers have proposed that staff working on the frontline might be better placed to innovate solutions. Drawing on a study of employee-driven innovation in UK public healthcare, the authors explore the process through which staff innovate without the resources that support policy implementation, showing how the translation of ideas from problematization to practice is underpinned by ‘bricolage’—the appropriation and repurposing of resources ‘at hand’.

By means of an exploratory analysis based on six specific case studies that are representative of the French approach to employee-driven innovation (EDI), this article demonstrates that EDI can mean very different things in different organizations. In the first part of the article, the reasons why businesses choose to adopt structured approaches that foster EDI will be reviewed. The second part describes the conceptual prism through which approaches to employee-driven innovation are analysed, while the third part outlines the methodology underlying the study. In the fourth section, case studies illustrating the variety of EDI approaches are presented. The penultimate section features an examination of the factors which differentiate the various modes of existence of structured approaches to EDI. The article concludes with a discussion of the results obtained.