RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

In search of balance. Managing ambidexterity in a fast growing techno-SME 359
boundary-spanning is described as a way to stimulate exploration, including using perspectives
from outside the team to develop new solutions. Other practices include stimulating the
adoption of values related to exploration, allowing people freedom in accomplishing of their
tasks and encouraging people to work together. Practices designed stimulate exploitation are
limiting discussion, adopting values related to exploitation, making decisions and rules to guide
people’s actions, and redirecting people’s efforts when they drift away from the objective.
To conclude, Ampelmann is a fast-growing high-tech SME that pursues both exploration
(innovation) and exploitation (operation) activities simultaneously. Since Ampelmann has a
lot of in-house technical expertise, the company is able to respond to customer demands and
provide solutions in a relatively short time. It was found that, when evaluating the five forms
of ambidexterity for Ampelmann at a company level, only contextual and leadership ambidexterity
are appropriate solutions. However, the main result of this study is that the case shows
that, at a project level, all five forms can be recognized and implemented to deal with exploration
and exploitation. Since this was not found previously in literature, this could mean a
shift in the discussion about and research involving ambidexterity in SMEs from a company
level to a project level. Furthermore, we found that, to manage the contradictory demands
between exploration and exploitation, the exploitative activities first need to be placed on a
higher organizational level (this is probably true for both activities, but this research emphasized
exploration). In the Ampelmann case, it can be seen that the organization of innovation
is still in a very early stage. Innovation is divided among different units and some
components (such as project evaluation) are absent all together.
For Ampelmann, the organization of innovation first needs to be improved. Many of the
weaknesses that were identified are mostly rooted in relative lack of organization regarding
innovation. Although Ampelmann is committed to innovation, in most cases this commitment
is directly driven by concrete customer demand. As a result, projects are placed on hold when
a client withdraws or projects are restarted with a very tight deadline when a new customer
is found. This behavior, together with many similar examples, results in frequent changes in
resource demand and project priority, making it more difficult to manage the conflicting
demands between operations and innovation. Therefore, after the organization of innovation
has been moved to a higher level, the organization can start by managing the conflicting
demands outlined above.
This research adds to our understanding how SMEs and the various approaches to ambidexterity
are related. Outsourcing and structural ambidexterity are difficult to implement. Sequential
attention seems to be possible for Ampelmann, but it should be noted that this is only so
because of the specific industry in which Ampelmann operates. Contextual and leadership
ambidexterity are the most suitable given that Ampelmann in particular SMEs in general are
more under direct influence of their company leader(s). In addition, at SMEs realizing ambidexterity
should be mainly focused on project level instead of organizational level.
Recommendations
There are three types of recommendations to Ampelmann: strategic recommendation, organizational
recommendations and recommendations regarding the implementation of forms
of ambidexterity.