Learning to Innovate: How Does Ambidextrous Learning Matter to Radical and Incremental Innovation Capabilities?

The notion that ambidextrous learning will improve firm performance and survival has become prominent in the organizational learning literature. Arguing that innovation capabilities are central to the ambidexterity hypothesis, we investigate how the two dimensions of ambidextrous learning (synergy and balance) affect firms? incremental and radical innovation capabilities. Based on organizational learning theory and the dominant logic literature, we develop the theoretical arguments that the synergy of ambidexterity drives incremental innovation capability and the balance dimension of ambidexterity influences radical innovation capability. We conjecture that also there is an interaction effect between synergy and balance on both radical and incremental innovation capabilities. We base our empirical analysis on a survey of a wide range of high-tech firms in China. We find broad support for our theoretical arguments.