Beyond organizational ambidexterity : The multidextrous deeptech startup

Abstract

Collaborative ecosystems can be a crucial element in overcoming technological, business development, scaling, and commercialization risks. Deep-tech startups may therefore look to collaboration partners to increase their ambidexterity and fulfill their exploration and exploitation needs.Main issue and objective: While the literature exploring the impact of collaborations on ambidexterity in large corporates is abundant, there is a manifest literature gap in how and if deep-tech startups use collaborations to achieve the same. This explorative inductive study aimed to investigate if deep-tech startups use collaborations to achieve ambidexterity and if these collaborations focus more on exploration or exploitation activities. We also sought to gain a deeper understanding of the deep-tech start-up collaboration process with a focus on the motivation, the partnership type, and the practical implementation of the collaboration to evaluate the impact of the collaboration on startup performance (access to resources, innovation, learning, access to market, etc.). Finally, we aimed to identify key factors and best practices that contribute to successful deep-tech startup collaboration.Central research question: The central research question at the heart of the thesis is formulated as follows: Do deep-tech startups use collaborations to achieve ambidexterity and enhanced performance? Research design and methodology: This inductive exploratory study was based on seven semi-structured interviews with deep-tech startup founders who had a physical product offering. The interview contents were analyzed qualitatively using Thematic Analysis by reducing the interview data to its core elements, identifying and coding recurring themes, summarizing the results graphically, interpreting the main findings and supporting these interpretations with direct quotations from the interviews. Findings: We found that deep-tech startups rely heavily on collaborations for both exploration and exploitation. The deep-tech startups interviewed juggled a multitude of collaborations, at all technology readiness levels, for both exploration and exploitation purposes, and with a wide variety of collaboration partner types, in an approach that we termed multidextrous. Adapting the seldom-used concept of multidexterity to the collaboration ecosystem of deep-tech startups, we defined the multidexterity concept as “the capacity to concurrently foster and manage multiple unique collaborations that span various partner types (startups, SMEs, Universities, corporates), technology readiness levels, industries, and objectives (from exploration to exploitation).” Conclusions and outlook: Very little work currently exists on how deep-tech startups approach collaborations. The findings of this study show that collaborations are an essential tool used extensively by deep-tech startups to overcome their unique challenges. A deductive study with a larger sample is required to validate the generalization made in this explorative inductive study. More detailed case studies and observation studies are required to highlight critical strategies, lessons learned, and success factors to effectively navigate this intensive, unique, multidextrous collaboration environment.