Integration of an exploration program with its parent organization: A lifecycle perspective

Sihem Ben mahmoud-Jouini and Florence Charue-Duboc
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Sihem Ben mahmoud-Jouini: GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Florence Charue-Duboc: CRG I3 - Centre de recherche en gestion i3 - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - Université Paris-Saclay - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Exploration programs are collections of interconnected exploration projects that are identified, coordinated, and managed in order to pursue a strategic objective of exploring radical innovations to be developed by the parent organization. Based on a longitudinal fine-grained study of a firm that has launched such an initiative, we offer a characterization of an exploration program and outline the coexistence of its integration with, as well as its isolation from, its parent organization. This is achieved through mechanisms and boundary activities complementing each other and undertaken by actors involved in the program and located at different levels of the parent organization. We show how this integration with the parent organization evolves between the program initiation and its implementation and how the differences lie in its exploratory nature, i.e., the definition of its scope, which is not known at its launch, the potential leveraging of the firm's existing resources to execute the exploration projects and then to further develop them, and the capitalization on the projects' outcome and the use of the knowledge that has been built in excess. Thus we further bridge the literature on project and program management with the literature on innovation management and show how an exploration program can contribute to achieving ambidexterity at the firm level.

Keywords: Longitudinal research; exploration project; exploration program; ambidexterity; integration; lifecycle: initiation; implementation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ppm
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Published in International Journal of Project Management, 2022, 40 (5), pp.587-597. ⟨10.1016/j.ijproman.2022.05.006⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03917572

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2022.05.006

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