Organizational knowledge and ambidexterity in national laboratories: A tale of three industries

Ambidexterity, i.e. balancing the need to exploit against the need to explore, is a well-known challenge in most innovation-driven firms. Does it also apply to national laboratories? We conduct a survey-based study of the national laboratories of a rapidly developing country, whose stated missions are 1) satisfying the needs of targeted local technology users; 2) commercialization of technology; and 3) developing a long-term R&D capability for the country. We try to identify internal and external sources of organizational knowledge and quantify how they contribute the performance of R&D project groups. In particular, we focus on the impact of knowledge inflows on the laboratories´ success at achieving their stated missions. Our study covers 208 recently completed R&D projects that span three industries: biotechnology; electronics and computers; materials and nano-materials. Our study finds that, regardless of industry, ambidexterity is a major challenge for the national laboratories. Both internal and external sources of knowledge that contribute to the success of the short-term missions of satisfying user needs and commercializing technology have a detrimental impact on developing a long-term R&D capability, and conversely.