Ambidextrous Organizational and Individual Competencies in Open Innovation: The Dawn of a new Research Agenda

Abstract

This paper describes a conceptual approach to individual and organizational competencies needed for Open Innovation (OI) using a new ambidexterity model. It starts from the assumption that the entire innovation process is rarely open by all means, as the OI concept may suggest. It rather takes into consideration that in practice especially for early phases of the innovation process the organization and their innovation actors are opening up for new ways of joint ideation, collaboration etc. to gain a maximum of explorative performance and effectiveness. Though, when it comes to committing considerable resources to development and implementation activities, the innovation process usually closes step by step as efficiency criteria gain ground for a maximum of knowledge exploitation. The ambidexterity model of competences for OI refers to these tensions and provides a new framework to understand the needs of industry and Higher Education Institutes (HEI) to develop appropriate exploration and exploitation competencies for OI.