EXPLORATORY AND EXPLOITATIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT: HOW PRODUCT AND ENGINEERING MANAGERS’ PERCEPTIONS DIFFER: A CASE OF TWO LARGE HIGH-TECH CORPORATIONS

Ambidexterity has been a focus for many researchers in the past few decades, and multiple angles of ambidexterity have been studied to understand how to achieve it, its antecedents, and its impact on organisations. While personal ambidexterity has been studied with respect to the tensions the individuals might experience as they juggle exploratory and exploitative innovation projects, little is known about their individual sensemaking prior to their exercise of ambidexterity. This paper aims at narrowing this gap in the literature by offering an insight, based on personal construct theory, as to why managers from product management and engineering management functions in software organisations may not be applying exploratory techniques on exploratory innovation projects. A key finding from this research indicates that managers do not differentiate between types of project in a sufficiently explicit and propositional manner, and as a result, do not choose techniques appropriate to the situation. Instead, they tend to apply exploitative techniques on exploratory innovation projects with slight variations. Recommendations to practitioners to address the issues uncovered are proposed.

How do polychronicity and interfunctional coordination affect the relationship between exploratory innovation and the quality of new product development?

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the impact of exploratory innovation on the quality of new product development (NPD), and how do polychronicity of the top management team (TMT) and interfunctional coordination (IFC) moderate the above relationship. Design/methodology/approach The hypotheses were tested by the survey data of 210 Chinese enterprises. Hierarchical regression analyzes were used to test the hypotheses in this research. Findings The results indicate that exploratory innovation facilitates NPD quality. TMT polychronicity weakens the effect of exploratory innovation on NPD quality. IFC strengthens the effect of exploratory innovation on NPD quality. Practical implications This study provides managers with insight on the relationship between exploratory innovation and NPD quality. To improve NPD quality, managers should be paying more attention to exploratory innovation. Furthermore, this study helps managers to understand how the relationship changes with the increases of TMT polychronicity and IFC. Originality/value This study highlights the value of exploratory innovation in increasing NPD quality based on the knowledge-based view. By incorporating TMT polychronicity and IFC based on the attention-based view, it offers much richer understandings of how exploratory innovation affects NPD quality.

Research on dual innovation incentive mechanism in terms of organizations’ differential knowledge absorptive capacity

Differences in the capacity for absorption between different organizations will have an important impact on an organization’s choices of innovation exploration and exploitive innovation strategies. Organizations need to explore correct strategic decisions under different policies for long-term development. This study with limited rational first-mover and late-mover organizations as the research object, based on the evolutionary game theory model, using visualization system deduced first-mover and late-mover organizations in the knowledge absorptive capacity differences and incentive policies under the condition of different strategies selection process. The research shows that the rationality of policy incentive setting has a direct impact on the choice of organizational dual innovation strategy with different knowledge absorption capacities. The market pattern is stable and organizational knowledge absorption capacity is different. The higher the policy incentive level is, the more the organization is inclined to carry out exploratory innovation activities. Under the environment of stable market structure, different organizational knowledge absorption capacity, and no policy incentive, late-mover cannot adopt exploratory innovation strategy alone. When the market pattern is stable and the absorptive capacity of the organization is different, whether the late-mover can adopt the exploratory innovation strategy depends on the policy incentive level. In this case, the optimal situation is to have the opportunity to change to exploratory innovation at the same time as the first-movers.

How firms accumulate knowledge to innovate – an empirical study of Vietnamese firms

PurposeOrganizational innovations are closely associated with organizational knowledge, and thus a firm builds its knowledge base to enhance its innovative performance. However, insights into this process are still limited, especially in the context of firms in developing countries. Building on the dynamic managerial capabilities literature and open innovation paradigm, this paper attempts to fill this gap by developing and empirically testing a model that investigates how firms in developing countries accumulate knowledge to innovate.Design/methodology/approachA model of a firm's knowledge accumulation and innovation is proposed in which it specifies relationships among absorptive capacity, knowledge breadth, research and development (R&D), knowledge depth, exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, and then it is empirically tested by using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique based on the surveyed data of Vietnamese firms.FindingsThe results indicate that absorptive capacity positively influences both knowledge breadth and knowledge depth, knowledge breadth positively influences R&D, R&D positively influences exploratory innovation and knowledge depth, and knowledge depth positively influences exploratory and exploitative innovation.Practical implicationsThe study proposes an “acquire and develop” open innovation model for firms in developing countries in which firms acquire external technologies and then develop R&D (develop and design) capability to adapt acquired technologies to their local conditions to create new organizational-specific capabilities and exploratory innovation.Originality/valueThis study argues that external knowledge acquisition is beneficial to innovative performance of firms in developing countries via renewing their knowledge base. Furthermore, the study provides the unique evidence that novel external knowledge acquisition and internal R&D are fit to each other in the fit-as-mediation form in which novel external knowledge acquisition is mediated by R&D to positively influence exploratory innovation.