My Own Book Review

Robert A. BURGELMAN & Leonard R. SAYLES (1986), Inside Corporate Innovation: Strategy, Structure and Managerial Skills

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: BACK TO THE FUTURE?

“The challenge for established firms, we believe, is not either to be well organized and act in unison or to be creative and entrepreneurial. The real challenge, it would seem, is to be able to live with the tensions generated by both modes of action. This will require top management’s exploitation of existing opportunities to the fullest (because only relatively few will be available), the generation of entirely new opportunities (because today’s success is no guarantee for tomorrow), and the balancing of exploitation and generation over time (because resources are limited). Strategic management approaches will have to accomplish all three concerns simultaneously and virtually continuously.” (Inside Corporate Innovation, 1986: 191, emphasis added)

This quote from the Epilogue of Inside Corporate Innovation, formulated 30 years ago, unwittingly anticipated large streams of important academic research that has built on James March’s distinction between “exploitation” and “exploration” in organizational learning (1991) and on the revival and elaboration of the idea of “ambidextrous” organizations (1976) by Michael Tushman and Charles O’Reilly (1997).