Innovation ambidexterity and impact on the performance in IT companies: the moderating role of business experience

This study aims to examine the relation between innovation ambidexterity and organisational performance and the moderating effect of business experience on a sample of IT companies. Various authors pointed out the necessity to analyse not only explorative and exploitative innovation separately, but also their combined effects on organisational performance. These effects are assessed by using polynomial regressions in testing the research hypotheses. Business experience contributes to important differences in both the quantity and quality of resources available, which are critical for innovation. With only a handful of papers specifically addressing business experience in the context of innovation ambidexterity, this study fills a major research gap. The findings demonstrate the positive influence of innovation ambidexterity on organisational performance. In terms of business experience, the findings show that in new ventures it moderates the relation between innovation ambidexterity and organisational performance, while in established companies no relation was found. Business experience is rarely used to explain interactions between innovation and performance and, as such, we provide new insights on how both new ventures and established companies make use of business experience in their innovation approaches.