Organizing for innovation: Exploring in an exploitative business environment

Abstract

With changing markets and regulatory frameworks companies must adapt in order to stay competitive. Initiating innovative activities in large, well-established organizations can be a challenging process and theorists debate how this should be done without hampering existing products and processes. By conducting an exploratory case study this research provides an in-depth understanding of the process leading to organizing for innovation in Avinor ANSD. By investigating the five propositions derived in chapter 2 this research provides clear indications on how internally organized explorative activities affect the exploitative environment in an organization. Based on these findings this research provides a recommendation on how large organizations with significant exploitative traits should organize in order to succeed. Building on organizational learning theory and resource-based theory this research contributes to existing theory by providing insight in a more industry- and safety regulated company than what most other organizational research has encompassed. Nearly all findings indicate that the explorative unit should be kept in-house. Remaining in-house enables the initiative to leverage on Avinor ANSD resources and competencies which have been developed over decades. This access provides the in-house explorative initiative with significant competitive advantage compared to a spun out initiative. Several in-house organizing strategies are discussed, however, organizational ambidexterity is found to be the most effective organizational structure for Avinor ANSD as it provides both the explorative activities and exploitative environment with essential framework conditions. This in-depth research finds that Avinor ANSD has commenced in such an ambidextrous structure, there are however some potential improvements and implications which are elaborated in the end of this report. Keywords: organizational learning theory, ambidextrous organizations, exploitation, exploration, strategic management, intrapreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship, resource-based view/theory, dynamic capabilities, competitive advantage, strategic entrepreneurship, institutional theory.