Antecedents of strategic ambidexterity in firms' product innovation: External knowledge and internal information sharing

The conflict between "faster, better and cheaper" and high environment uncertainty forces firms to choose between different product innovation strategies. This study shows that firms can develop strategic ambidexterity in product innovation (SAPI) through diverse product innovation strategies, by effectively exploiting internal and external resources as well as their combination. The work explores the relationship between the interplay of external knowledge sources and internal information sharing for SAPI in 600 small- and medium-sized Chinese manufacturing enterprises. The results show knowledge breadth and depth and information sharing are positively related to SAPI, which tends to increase when knowledge depth is associated with information sharing. The study contributes to new product development (NPD) literature by introducing the concept of strategic ambidexterity in product innovation, and exploring the roles of external knowledge sources and internal information sharing, and their complementarity, on the ability to develop firm-level SAPI. It further provides implications for open innovation studies.