Achieving Ambidexterity through Innovation Portfolio Management - an Explorative Framework

Many companies face the challenge of ambidexterity: they must exploit their current business while simultaneously exploring new opportunities. Some scholars point out that a portfolio management approach is suitable to meet this challenge and achieve continuous innovation. This study examines how managers balance and integrate exploration and exploitation in innovation portfolio management (IPM) for the intended outcome of ambidexterity by conducting a case study at a global automotive and industrial supplier. The resulting exploratory model proposes novel preconditions and enablers to achieve ambidexterity through IPM. The conclusions support the common finding that IPM helps to balance exploration and exploitation. Interestingly, the data analysis shows that IPM not only facilitates the balance between exploration and exploitation: these activities are also integrated through the establishment of organizational and procedural linking mechanisms. These findings underpin the view that the "sanctity" of ambidexterity lies in the combination, and not just the pure balancing, of exploration and exploitation.