Innovation for the value creation. Exploitation, exploration and ambidexterity in innovative business model oriented toward stakeholder

The firms’ adoption of an innovative strategy is even more crucial in the current economic context, due to the increasing stakeholders’ attention to environmental and social issues. The book investigates how firms create value for stakeholders by using the innovative strategies of exploitation and exploration, in this challenging competitive environment. In this sense, the two strategies have been presented with the lens of stakeholder orientation. In particular, after a thorough review of the literature, the author introduces the concept of the stakeholder domain by asserting that firms that adopt exploration, exploitation, or ambidexterity strategies within their own organizational practices are firms that relate to stakeholders in an exploratory, exploitative, or ambidextrous way. Thus, the author defines the concept of explorative/exploitative stakeholder orientation, as well as the concept of ambidextrous stakeholder orientation, as the ability of a firm to orientate itself towards, and manage the relationships with, specific stakeholder(s) through exploration/exploitation or ambidexterity strategies. Finally, referring to the most emerging literature, the book introduces the concept of cross-boundary ambidextrous stakeholder orientation as the aptitude of a firm to take advantage of the opportunities of simultaneously balancing exploration and exploitation across internal and external stakeholder domains. In this theoretical framework, the book explores the behaviour of 500 worldwide firms, covering 2010 to 2018, and by using sophisticated statistical analysis, presents managerial and practical implications of the adoption of the stakeholder domain. Finally, the book shines the spotlight on the undisputed relevance of stakeholder theory, by expanding the space of investigation on new frontiers of scientific research linked to innovation management.