ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses organisational paradoxes related to creativity and innovation. It explores the concept of ambidexterity as a means to manage paradoxes of creativity and innovation. Organisational ambidexterity is considered the principle way of 'managing' the overarching tensions. Ambidexterity is extremely important for the performance of any organisation because it allows firms to achieve the combination of incremental and radical innovation, through exploitation and exploration. In order for organisations to develop harmonic ambidexterity where exploitation and exploration are pursued simultaneously and within the same unit, a context that promotes a behavioural orientation towards a combined capacity for both, needs to be developed. Ambidexterity is the way of generating the necessary synergy between the profit and breakthrough emphases, which is the underlying tension in the strategic intent paradox. The new product development (NPD) firms studied by Andriopoulos and Lewis demonstrated mixes of integration and differentiation in their management techniques, and hence a mix of contextual and architectural ambidexterity, respectively.
