The ambidextrous organization tushman pdf

He gave her free rein to operate independently from the print business, and she set up a kind of skunk-works operation, bringing in people from outside USA Today and housing them on a different floor from the newspaper. She built a fundamentally different kind of organization, with roles and incentives suited to the instantaneous delivery of news and to an entrepreneurial, highly collaborative culture.

With Internet use exploding, the venture seemed primed for success. But results were disappointing. Although USAToday.

Viewing her unit as a competitor with the print business, they had little incentive to help her succeed and made few efforts to share their considerable resources with her. Soon, USAToday. Cichowski pushed to have her business spun out entirely from the newspaper, as other companies were doing with their Internet ventures, but Curley had a very different view. He had come to believe that the new unit required not greater separation but greater integration.

To execute that strategy, Curley knew he had to create an ambidextrous organization that could sustain the print business yet also pursue innovations in broadcasting and online news. So in , he replaced the leader of USAToday. Both the online and television organizations remained separate from the newspaper, maintaining distinctive processes, structures, and cultures, but Curley demanded that the senior leadership of all three businesses be tightly integrated. Together with Karen Jurgenson, the editor of USA Today , the heads of the online and television units instituted daily editorial meetings to review stories and assignments, share ideas, and identify other potential synergies.

The moves quickly paid off, as the reporters realized that their stories would reach a much broader audience—and that they would have the opportunity to appear on TV. At the same time, Curley made larger changes to the organization and its management.

He let go of a number of senior executives who did not share his commitment to the network strategy, ensuring that his team would present a united front and deliver consistent messages to the staff.

He also changed the incentive program for executives, replacing unit-specific goals with a common bonus program tied to growth targets across all three media. Yet even as sharing and synergy were being promoted, the organizational integrity of the three units was carefully maintained. The units remained physically separate, and they each pursued very different staffing models. The staff members of USAToday.

Reporters continued to be fiercely independent and to focus on more in-depth coverage of stories than the television staff. Even as sharing and synergy were being promoted, the organizational integrity of the three units was carefully maintained. Because of its ambidextrous organization, USA Today has continued to compete aggressively in the mature business of daily print news while also developing a strong Internet franchise and providing Gannett television stations with coverage of breaking news.

Another company that has used an ambidextrous organization to spur growth through radical innovation is Ciba Vision. Established in the early s as a unit of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Ciba-Geigy now Novartis , the Atlanta-based Ciba Vision sells contact lenses and related eye-care products to optometrists and consumers.

Without radically new products, Ciba Vision would slowly decline and ultimately fail. To survive and grow, Bradley saw, his organization would have to continue making money in the mature conventional-contacts business while simultaneously producing a stream of breakthroughs. In , Bradley launched six formal development projects, each focused on a revolutionary change. Four entailed new products, including daily disposables and extended-wear lenses, and two involved new manufacturing processes.

Bradley knew that attempting to manage these projects under the constraints of the old organization would not work. Inevitably, conflicts over the allocation of human and financial resources would slow down and disrupt the focus needed for breakthrough innovations. Further, the new manufacturing process required different technical skills, which would make communication across old and new units difficult.

Given the freedom to shape their own organizations, the new units created very different structures, processes, and cultures. The extended-wear team remained in Atlanta, though in a facility separate from the conventional-lens business, while the daily-disposables team was located in Germany.

Each team hired its own staff, decided on its own reward system, and chose its own process for moving from development to manufacturing. But even as Bradley understood the importance of protecting the new units from the processes and cultural norms of the old business, he realized they also had to share expertise and resources, both with the traditional business and with one another.

He therefore took a number of steps to integrate management across the company. Working closely with Bradley, Hunter carefully managed the trade-offs and conflicts between the old business and the new units. While this move was largely rhetorical, it had an important effect. It underscored the connections between the breakthrough initiatives and the conventional operation, bringing together all employees in a common cause and preventing organizational separation from turning into organizational fragmentation.

As Bradley noted, the slogan gave people a social value as well as an economic reason for working together. Like USA Today , Ciba Vision also revamped its incentive system, rewarding managers primarily for overall company performance rather than for the results of their particular units. The ambidexterity paid off. The conventional-lens business, moreover, remained profitable enough to generate the cash needed to fund the daily disposables and extended-wear lenses.

More recently, Ciba Vision has continued to reap the benefits of ambidexterity by pioneering so-called fashion lenses that allow people to change the color of their eyes. One of the most important lessons is that ambidextrous organizations need ambidextrous senior teams and managers—executives who have the ability to understand and be sensitive to the needs of very different kinds of businesses.

Combining the attributes of rigorous cost cutters and free-thinking entrepreneurs while maintaining the objectivity required to make difficult trade-offs, such managers are a rare but essential breed. Ambidextrous organizations encompass two profoundly different types of businesses—those focused on exploiting existing capabilities for profit and those focused on exploring new opportunities for growth.

As this table indicates, the two require very different strategies, structures, processes, and cultures. And both leaders backed up their actions with new incentive programs that institutionalized the new management approach. These aspirations provide an overarching goal that permits exploitation and exploration to coexist. USA Today , well aware of the natural skepticism of newspaper reporters, took a particularly aggressive approach to communicating its new vision, strategy, and organization.

Such "ambidextrous organizations," as the authors call them, allow executives to pioneer radical or disruptive innovations while also pursuing incremental gains. Of utmost importance to the ambidextrous organization are ambidextrous managers--executives with the ability to understand and be sensitive to the needs of very different kinds of businesses. They possess the attributes of rigorous cost cutters and free-thinking entrepreneurs while also maintaining the objectivity required to make difficult trade-offs.

Almost every company needs to renew itself through the creation of breakthrough products and processes, but it shouldn't do so at the expense of its traditional business. Building an ambidextrous organization is not easy, but the structure itself, combining organizational separation with senior team integration, is not difficult to understand.

To discover how managers can create distinct units focused on innovation while also integrating them at the senior executive level to ensure their success.

Brought to you by:. Article Classic. What's included: Educator Copy. Not teaching at a university? But as every businessperson knows, there are companies that do… Expand. View on PubMed. Save to Library Save. Create Alert Alert. Share This Paper. Background Citations. Methods Citations. Results Citations. Topics from this paper.

Citation Type. Has PDF. Publication Type. More Filters. It has long been recognized in the literature that the pursuit of radical or disruptive innovation by established firms poses an organizational challenge for the firm.