Ambidexterity as a dynamic capability: Resolving the innovator's dilemma
Section snippets
Dynamic capabilities, organizational ambidexterity and competitive advantage
As some firms, albeit not the majority, do survive in the face of change, the question is how they manage to adapt—and why are some firms able to accomplish this while others cannot? Central to the adaptive process are the notions of a firm's ability to exploit existing assets and positions in a profit producing way and simultaneously to explore new technologies and markets; to configure and reconfigure organizational resources to capture existing as well as new opportunities (Helfat &
Exploration, exploitation, and organizational ambidexterity: dynamic capabilities in practice
Based largely on March's (1991) seminal paper on exploration and exploitation, there has been a growing interest in research on if, when, and how organizations adapt to change. For example, Christensen (1997) described how disruptive technologies undermine an established firm's competitive position by offering a cheaper and often less sophisticated alternative that is good enough for most customers. In spite of the deadly consequences of disruptive technology for successful incumbents,
Ambidexterity in action
Conceptually, dynamic capabilities are a useful way to understand inter-firm performance differentials (Ethiraj et al., 2005), but what specifically would these capabilities look like and how would they operate to help a firm sense, seize, and reconfigure organizational assets? Eisenhardt and Martin (2000) note that unless made specific, dynamic capabilities remain vague (e.g., “routines to learn routines”) and add little other than terminology to our understanding of organizational adaptation.
Future directions
The fundamental logic underlying evolutionary adaptation is variation–selection–retention. Organizational ecologists have used this to explain mortality rates among populations of organizations (Hannan & Carroll, 1992) and to argue against organizational adaptation. Yet this same variation–selection–retention logic underlies the idea of exploration–exploitation and organizational ambidexterity. As a dynamic capability, ambidexterity helps organizations sense and seize new opportunities and to
Conclusion
In his influential book, The Innovator's Dilemma, Christensen (1997) described the challenges facing organizations attempting to adapt to changes in technologies, markets, competition and regulatory environments. He builds a compelling case for the need for differential organizational alignments to pursue exploitation and exploration. Yet, in the end, he concludes that it is not possible to resolve the “innovator's dilemma” and argues that, confronted with a disruptive change, managers cannot
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