We advance understanding of the embedded role of the family household in governing firm performance in an impoverished setting. Drawing on bricolage theory, which articulates how individuals make do with resources at hand, we suggest that family household diversity facilitates creativity while family household shared business experience facilitates routinization. While initially performance enhancing, unfettered creativity and overroutinization have detrimental effects and thus expect the highest levels of performance to occur at moderate levels of family household diversity and shared business experience. We find general support for our hypotheses using a large sample of firms and families in impoverished Indian households. •The family household is an informal institutional force in impoverished settings.•Family household composition characteristics influence firm performance.•We use a sample of Indian slum households and embedded firms.•Diversity and shared business experience are curvilinearly related to performance.•We highlight the benefits of routinization and threats of unfettered creativity. Display omitted