Exploration, exploitation and innovation performance: Disentangling environmental dynamism

Abstract

Environmental dynamism has recently attracted the attention of scholars studying the relationships between exploration and exploitation strategies and innovation performance. Surprisingly, although extant research has already acknowledged its multidimensional character, it has only been analyzed in an aggregate fashion. In this paper, we distinguish two components of environmental dynamism, the pace of market evolution and the pace of technology evolution, and we elaborate on their different impacts in the context of exploration and exploitation strategies. More precisely, we argue that while a rapid pace of technology evolution has opposite impacts on the relationships between exploration (positive), exploitation (negative) and innovation performance, a rapid pace of market evolution positively affects both exploration and exploitation. Our findings provide substantial support for our prediction using a large panel of Spanish innovating firms for the period 2008-2012