Exploration and Exploitation in Product Innovation

Abstract

A central theoretical problem in organizational evolution is how organizations acquire new capabilities. Organizational exploitation of current capabilities often reduces exploration of new capabilities, resulting in a short-term bias in organizational adaptation (March, 1991). In addition, problemistic search and slack search have different consequences for exploration and exploitation because exploration has greater risk and less routinization. Exploration and exploitation are also affected by organizational momentum (Kelly and Amburgey, 1991) and direct competition from exploitation to exploration (March, 1991). These propositions are tested using data on innovations in shipbuilding between 1972 and 2000.