Organizing for Innovation : The Varying Needs of Supply-Side and Demand-Side Search

Successful innovation requires distinct types of search in different domains. However, we know little about how an organizational context can accommodate varying search processes. Based on a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of 15 work units at three major corporations, we find that a work unit's formal structure and informal culture appear to be associated with exploitation or exploration in the technology-oriented supply-side search domain, while its target and monitoring systems are associated with different search types in the market-oriented demand-side domain. Our findings allow us to contribute to search theory by providing insights on how different search types may be accommodated across search domains. Furthermore, we contribute to nascent organizational ambidexterity research by introducing organizational-level antecedents for cross-functional ambidexterity.