Research on organizational ambidexterity has long highlighted the need to balance exploration and exploitation. Many established businesses, however, are challenged by the diverging needs of how to transform to an organizational balance. Significantly, while in the core business, there is a need to strive for excellence and zero error tolerance. Also, established businesses are beginning to recognize the advantages of new innovation methodologies in an ever-changing market environment. Consequently, many firms initiate a transformation process to enable explorative innovation, embracing learning from mistakes faster, especially in the innovation departments. With this transformation process, they find themselves in a paradoxical situation. While their core business is characterized by excellence and zero error tolerance, in their innovation department, they aim to learn from mistakes quickly to become more innovative. Additionally, they phase a knowledge imbalance between employees in the operational business and employees in the innovation departments. To comprehend how and in which phases established companies evolve to find balance in excelling in their core business while learning from mistakes to drive explorative innovation, we conducted a multi-case study of seven family businesses. Our findings extend current literature, revealing a process model of how to reach organizational ambidexterity. Our findings further indicate that companies have learned that they can only ensure their long-term success through innovation continuity of simultaneous exploration and exploitation in all forms of ambidexterity. As operational and innovative business units are subject to different organizational routines, we add the importance of permeable organizational routines to the understanding of organizational ambidexterity.
