Leveraging the Benefits of Exploratory Learning and Exploitative Learning in NPD: The Role of Innovation Field Orientation

Scholars have increasingly noted that firm-level capabilities may be crucial for resolving the dilemmas resulting from either high exploratory or high exploitative learning. However, our current understanding of this issue remains limited. Innovation field orientation is a firm-level capability to strategically structure dispersed innovation efforts and reconfigure resources on them, and may help a firm leverage the benefits of distinctive learning strategies. Based on this idea, this paper investigates innovation field orientation and examines how its capacities (the specification, establishment of focus areas, and stimulation of synergies) influence the performance of high exploratory/exploitative learning. Our findings suggest that the capacities of innovation field orientation moderate the effects of exploratory and exploitative learning on new product program performance, and clarify how innovation field orientation enables organization to leverage the benefits of high exploratory/exploitative learning and address their disadvantages.