The balance between exploitation and exploration: leveraging on bundles of organizational solutions

This paper aims to contribute to this literature by disentangling the specific set of organizational solutions that support firms in achieving exploration and exploitation. The research question we aim to answer is the following: which bundles of organizational solutions impact on both exploration and exploitation orientations? To address this research question a qualitative approach was chosen (Yin, 1994). A multiple case study was carried out across four medium enterprises located in Northeast Italy. The firms analyzed are leading companies in their sectors and in order to sustain their competitiveness they are refocusing the innovation 3 process from an efficiency-driven approach towards one which is more based on experimentation activities. Consequently these cases represent an appropriate setting to investigate the impact of an extensive set of organizational solutions on exploration and exploitation orientations.