Towards an open ambidextrous system : how organizations manage exploration and exploitation in open innovation environments

Abstract

This research examines the telecommunication industry and uses it as an example in order to present a general model of how ambidexterity is carried out in the context of open innovation. This emerging approach to ambidexterity has been particularly evident in the telecommunication industry where exploration and exploitation activities are established on information technology structures. Ambidexterity is the idea that successful firms simultaneously explore new ideas while exploiting existing ones in order to sustain profitability, especially in dynamic environments. Few studies have discussed ambidexterity that is carried out in contexts of open innovation. For this reason, this doctoral thesis addresses this gap in our understanding of ambidexterity, and contributes to it by examining the question: "How do ambidextrous organizations carry out exploration and exploitation in open innovation environments?" A new form of ambidexterity has been identified in this study; it is an open ambidextrous system. It exists in a particularly transparent form around organizations whose innovation activities are focused on information technology infrastructure, specifically networking technologies, as has been evident in the telecommunication industry. This presents important implications for the management information systems (MIS) literature. Open ambidextrous systems are established by organizations when they manage exploration and exploitation in open innovation environments. From that understanding ambidexterity has been identified as open. This offers important insight for the ambidexterity and open innovation literatures. As a result, organizations that adopt an open ambidextrous system are recognized as performing open exploration and open exploitation, where the two activities are perceived as two complementing systems identified as the open exploration system, and the open exploitation system. Therefore, this research combines insights from the ambidexterity, open innovation, and management information systems literatures, and contributes to them by offering a new and alternative view to ambidexterity that is based on the open innovation notion.