Innovation Ambidexterity Scale

Innovation Ambidexterity—the organizational capacity to simultaneously engage in exploration (pursuing radical, novel innovations) and exploitation (improving and extending existing products and processes)—is fundamental to sustained competitive advantage. March (1991) formalized this trade-off in Organization Science, arguing that organizations must balance the two to survive and thrive. Exploration alone leads to variety but insufficient returns; exploitation alone leads to competence traps and vulnerability to disruption. This scale, operationalized by He and Wong (2004) and extended by Jansen et al. (2006), measures organizational capability in both domains and the degree to which firms balance competing innovation imperatives.