Organizational Ambidexterity in the search phase of product innovation process: the Saes Getter case

Innovation is one of the most critical means in supporting and improving the competitive position of the firm, in particular, when markets are characterized by turbulences and fast evolutionary developments in technology. Under such conditions, a firm's survival and growth depend on its ability to balance the exploitation of existing knowledge with the exploration of new possibilities, by building ambidexterity capability. While different alternatives (structural and contextual ambidexterity) to realize the simultaneous reconciliation of exploration and exploitation at an operative level have been proposed in the literature how organizations build ambidexterity capability is not fully understood. The aim of this paper is thus to explore how exploration and exploitation balancing can be actually achieved. We decided to focus on the very early phase of the process where firms search for new ideas with which to renew themselves. To this end, we analysed the search phase of an highly innovative technology-based company by investigating structural design choices combined with the presence of specific roles and searching practices. The results show how exploration and exploitation balancing act can be actually achieved and maintained through a multilevel approach that integrates both the operative and the strategic levels. Our findings thus contribute to the organizational ambidexterity literature, by proposing a first interpretative model for dealing with ambidexterity in the search phase of the innovation process.