Abstract:

Within the extant literature on organizing and managing innovation activities, the need to make  successful exploitation of existing competences while exploring new opportunities, has been a basic concern point (March 1991, Levinthal and March 1993). In spite of the paradoxical characteristics that those activities unfold and display, ambidexterity is considerated as a powerful mechanism that allows organizations to attain the proper balance of the simultaneous imperatives of exploitation and exploration, to overcome organizational inertia and to succeed in face of change (cf. Benner and Tushman 2003, Jansen et al. 2006).