Exploration and exploitation juggling for novice entrepreneurs: Examination of action complexity on the perspective of individual ambidexterity in entrepreneurial education

Abstract

In action-based Entrepreneurial Education (EE), there are two important goals, including college students' entrepreneurial performance and motivation. In order to achieve these two goals, EE is trying to stimulate students' actions of exploration and exploitation by providing venture simulations. However, considering tensions between exploration and exploitation, as well as resource constraints faced by students as novice entrepreneurs, students need to juggle exploration and exploitation, leading to complicated actions. Motivated by this fact, this study examines students' exploration/exploitation juggling on the balanced dimension and the combined dimension based on ambidexterity theory.

Two hundred and forty-seven Chinese college students finished the measurements of exploration/exploitation juggling. Results of regression analysis show that on the balanced dimension, harmful effects exist in the enhancement of entrepreneurial performance if blindly narrowing the gap between exploration and exploitation. It means that simulations in EE should be designed to lead students to show inclination either on exploration or exploitation, instead of even distribution. On the combined dimension, although integration of exploration and exploitation doesn't contribute to performance, it works as a spur to entrepreneurial motivation. This means that simulations can be carefully managed tailoring to specific goals of EE other than performance, such as entrepreneurial passion. To conclude, the balanced and combined ambidexterity should be concerned in EE to give full play of students' advantages on the balanced dimension, at the same time, to fuel their enthusiasm for entrepreneurship on the combined dimension.