External Venturing and Discontinuous Strategic Renewal: An Options Perspective

This study examines the relationship between a firm's venturing activities and its undertaking of strategic renewal. The study was motivated by some important gaps in the corporate entrepreneurship literature on venturing and renewal. The extant literature has not focused on the different types and dimensions of firms' renewal activities. In particular, discontinuous renewal involving shifts in firms' core businesses is not well understood. Moreover, the conditions that drive firms to undertake strategic renewal have not been examined. For example, it is not known how venturing increases or reduces the benefits of undertaking renewal. This study focuses on a discontinuous form of renewal involving major changes in firms' core businesses and examines firms' external venturing activities that complement their internal development. We examine corporate venture capital (CVC) investments, which are direct minority equity investments made by established companies in privately held ventures. Discontinuous renewal is conceptualized as resulting from a set of related, and often sequential, managerial decisions. The first managerial decision is to initiate growth in a business that is relatively newer or smaller for the organization. The second decision is to move away, or even withdraw completely, from the current core business that enabled prior growth and prosperity for the firm and served as its primary revenue earner. Employing a real options perspective, we argue that CVC investments create growth options in new and existing businesses but do not result in firms' withdrawal from existing businesses. Therefore, we expect CVC activity to be negatively associated with the likelihood of a firm undertaking discontinuous renewal. We also propose that the benefits of withdrawing from existing businesses are even lower, and the costs even higher, for firms in dynamic industries and for firms that possess strong internal capabilities. The predictions of the study are tested using longitudinal data on 477 firms from the 1990 Fortune 500 list for the period 1990–2000. We find support for all our predicted hypotheses. These results help address important limitations in the corporate entrepreneurship literature. The study also contributes to the real options and organizational capabilities literatures.     

Effective implementation of relationship orientation in new product launches

The critical role of relationships in business performance is widely recognized in the business marketing literature. However, to date, the prevailing new product launch research has concentrated on firms' general customer and competitor focus on predicting launch performance, and mainly applied a product centered or marketing mix perspective on considering effective strategic and tactical launch activities. Consequently, there is only scant knowledge on the relevance of a relational perspective when launching new products. The study contributes to this gap by examining the impact of firms' relationship orientation on launch performance and the key activities through which it is transformed into performance in the new product launch context. A set of hypotheses is developed and tested with data collected from 109 new product launches in pharmaceutical companies. The results show that sales force management and relationship leveraging mediate relationship orientation's impact on launch performance through complexly intertwined relationships. From a theoretical perspective, this study highlights the role of the relational perspective in new product launch and fosters our understanding on how relationship-focused culture is effectively implemented in practice. From a managerial perspective, the results offer insights on how firms can effectively enhance the successful commercialization of new products through relationship-oriented sales and marketing activities.     

Internet of things technologies,digital servitization and business model innovation in BtoB manufacturing firms

Technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) are offering new opportunities and posing serious challenges to firms, forcing them to create entirely new business models, migrating from the conventional product-centric approaches to (digitally-based) service-oriented ones. This paper – following a qualitative research method – aims at describing the service-oriented impact of IoT technologies on firms' business models, with a particular focus on opportunities and challenges for BtoB manufacturing firms.Being the impact of IoT technologies on businesses a quite recent research stream, to date scarce attention has been devoted to the topic with specific attention to its impact on service-oriented business models in manufacturing firms. The paper contributes in this research stream in different ways. It proposes a map of digital servitization that helps in understanding firms' strategic transitions caused by technologies, making both theoretical and managerial contributions. Firstly, the research underlines the impact of the firms' sales model as a strategic factor in shaping firms' digital servitization strategies. In addition, three progressive levels of digital servitization complexity are identified, namely product- process- and outcome-oriented, that are based on an increasing use of IOT technologies and have specific challenges and opportunities.     

Why Do Firms Enter a New Product Market? A Two‐Dimensional Framework for Market Entry Motivation and Behavior

What are the energetic forces that induce established firms to enter new product markets? While most previous research has explained the economic profits expected from a new product market as firms' distinctive motivation for market entry, some recent studies also emphasize interfirm competition and benchmarking activities as another important factor that motivates firms' new market entry. To explain the established firms' diverse new product market entry behaviors, this study presents a two‐dimensional scheme of entry motivation in terms of the degrees of target market profit focus and competitor focus. The first dimension captures the economic motivation of firms' new market entry that ranges from focusing on the direct expected profits from the target market to considering more strategic/indirect benefit incentives. The second dimension captures the degree of firms' external motivation for entry affected by competitors that ranges from independent entry decisions to fully competitor‐oriented entry decisions. Using multiple‐industry survey data, the current study empirically verifies that these two entry motivation dimensions explain a great portion of actual firms' new product market entry behaviors and that they are independent of each other. Subsequently, this study validates that firms' operational size and their environmental factors like perceived technological uncertainty and competitive intensity upon new market entry affect the degrees of the two dimensions of firms' new product market entry motivation. More specifically, large firms less emphasize target‐market profits than small firms, and when perceived technological uncertainty is high, potential market entrants become less target market profit focused but more competitor focused. Under a highly competitive new market condition, firms focus on both target‐market profits and competitors. Based on the analysis of new market entry motivation dimensions, the current study proposes a new typology of established firms' market entry behaviors. The suggested typology represents the four different types of new product market entrants and examines specific characteristics and entry strategies for each type of potential entrants. This entry‐motivation framework should provide a deeper understanding of the backgrounds of entry behaviors and assist firms in developing appropriate entry strategies and in advantageously responding to rival firms' actions with regard to entry.     

Supportiveness of Organizational Climate, Market Orientation, and New Product Performance in Chinese Firms

Most knowledge development efforts in new product development have focused on Western economies and companies. However, due to its size, rapid growth rate, and market reforms, China has emerged as an important new context for new product development. Unfortunately, current understanding of the factors associated with new product success in China remains limited. We address this knowledge gap using mixed methods. First, we conducted 19 in‐depth interviews with managers involved in new product development in 11 different Chinese firms. The qualitative fieldwork indicated that firm behaviors and employee perceptions consistent with the phenomena of market orientation and the supportiveness of organizational climate both are viewed as important drivers of the new product performance of Chinese firms. Drawing on the marketing, management, and new product development literature this study develops a hypothetical model linking market orientation, supportiveness of organizational climate, and firms' new product performance. Direct relationships are hypothesized between both market orientation and supportiveness of organizational climate and firms' new product performance, as well as a relationship between supportiveness of organizational climate and market orientation. Data to test the hypothetical model were collected via an on‐site administered questionnaire from 110 manufacturing firms in China. The hypothesized relationships are tested using structural equation modeling. Results indicate a positive direct relationship of market orientation on firms' new product performance, with an indirect positive effect of supportiveness of organizational climate via its impact on market orientation. However, no support is found for a direct relationship between the supportiveness of a firm's organizational climate and its new product performance. These findings are consistent with resource‐based view theory propositions in the marketing literature indicating that market orientation is a valuable, nonsubstitutable, and inimitable resource and with similar propositions in the management literature concerning organizational culture. However, this study's findings also indicate that in contrast to a number of organizational culture theory propositions and empirical findings in some consumer service industries, the impact of organizational climate on firm performance in a new product context is indirect via the firm's generation, dissemination, and responsiveness to market intelligence. These results suggest that an effort to improve firms' new product performance by enhancing the flow and utilization of market intelligence is an appropriate allocation of resources. Further, this study's findings indicate that managers should direct at least some of their efforts to enhance a firm's market orientation at improving employee perceptions of the supportiveness of the firm's management and of their peers. This study indicates a need for further research concerning the role of different dimensions of organizational climate in firms' new product processes.     

Understanding the Antecedents,Contingencies, and Performance Implications of Process Innovation: A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective

This paper examines one of the most important sources of competitiveness in dynamic industries—the capability of firms to introduce process innovations. While the management of product innovation has received considerable theoretical and empirical attention in the literature, our knowledge about how firms become process innovators—and why many firms fail to do so—remains underdeveloped. In order to provide novel insights into the configuration of firms' process innovation activities and their performance implications, this paper draws on the dynamic capabilities approach. More specifically, this study aims to shed light on the antecedents, contingencies, and performance consequences of interfirm differences in process innovation success, that is, firms' propensity and effectiveness of implementing new production, supply chain, or administrative processes. Particular emphasis is placed upon the analysis of potential complementarities or substitution effects between innovation activities such as internal and external research and development, prototyping, external knowledge acquisition, and employee training. Cross‐sectional data from a large‐scale survey of German manufacturing and service firms serves as the basis for testing the hypotheses advanced in this paper. Findings suggest that by engaging in a broad range of different innovation activities, firms can indeed increase the likelihood of achieving process innovation success, which is in turn positively related to firm financial performance. Yet decreasing marginal returns to innovation activities have to be considered as process innovation propensity was found to increase with the number of activities pursued simultaneously only up to a point, after which negative marginal returns set in (inverted U‐shaped relationship). Furthermore, while environmental turbulence was found to have surprisingly little influence when it comes to translating process innovation success into firms' subsequent financial performance, industry membership as well as the nature of the innovation process (i.e., internal generation, external adoption, or cocreation of an innovation) emerged as key contingency factors. These findings have important theoretical as well as practical implications for managing new process introductions.     

The influence of firm and industry characteristics on returns from technology licensing deals: evidence from the US computer and pharmaceutical sectors

This study examines the relationships between firm and industry characteristics and firms' abnormal stock market returns accompanying the announcement of technology licensing deals. In particular, I examine the fit among firms' licensing activities, their resource endowments, and their industry context, and develop hypotheses on its impact on abnormal stock market returns after licensing deals. Analyzing 11 years of inward and outward licensing transactions in the US computer and pharmaceutical industries between 1990 and 2000, I find support for my argument that while firms profit from both inward and outward licensing, the magnitude of such profits is determined by licensing firms' resource endowments, and that these determinants have a different impact in different industry contexts. Understanding these relationships helps explain when firms should use licensing to exploit their proprietary technologies and make better predictions about the impact of licensing transactions on firm performance.     

Flexibility in internationalization: is it valuable during an economic crisis?

This study investigates the value of the strategic flexibility provided by firms' international investments during an economic crisis, defined here as an unanticipated significant downturn in the economy. To avoid below‐par performance, firms need to adapt quickly to this significant change in their environment, making real options very valuable to them. Although firms' international investments can potentially provide such flexibility, this issue has not been empirically examined in a context of such dramatic negative change. We consider two types of international investments by firms in this regard, foreign direct investments and export‐related international investments, developing two measures that directly assess the flexibility derived from each that are new to the literature. Based on these measures, we find evidence that both types of international investments provided valuable flexibility for Korean firms during the economic crisis conditions. This study contributes to the literature by showing that firms with real options investments in place have a greater ability to flexibly adapt their overall operations in line with unforeseen negative environmental change, in contrast to firms without such investments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An empirical analysis on purposes,drivers and activities of technology opportunity discovery: the case of Korean SMEs in the manufacturing sector

Technology opportunity discovery (TOD) is becoming increasingly important for identifying technology opportunities so that they can be reflected in firms' strategy planning. However, understanding of TOD practices within firms is limited, and the diversity of TOD practices has not been fully reflected in previous studies, especially from the perspective of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which typically lack diverse technology portfolios or plentiful innovation resources, so technology opportunities have seldom been defined and analyzed. This study aims to investigate SMEs' TOD practices and to identify their characteristics. Interviews were conducted with Korean SME executives to define a conceptual TOD model for SMEs, and 104 Korean SMEs' TOD drivers and activities were surveyed focusing business drivers, business models, and information gathering. The results were then analyzed to define six technology opportunity types and to derive similarities and differences among them, which are used to understand and further support SMEs' TOD practices. The research findings are expected to enhance understanding about TOD practices and to help establish SMEs' TOD strategies.     

The (Unknown) Providers to Other Firms' New Product Development: What's in It for Them?

For every inbound activity by a firm in open innovation, a reciprocal outbound activity by another firm must be generated. The reciprocal outbound activities range from transferring of knowledge and ideas to solutions delivered to other firms' new product development projects. This paper names the firms that produce the reciprocal outbound activity for “providers,” and is the first to empirically investigate such providers of ideas, solutions, and technologies for other firms' open innovation activities. The literature review shows a surprising shortage of research on who the providers are, how they engage with other firms, and not least what potential benefits can be achieved from supporting other firms' innovation activities. The paper uses a quantitative survey on Danish small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) carried out in 2010 to identify the providers, the role they take on, and the main benefits the providers gain. This paper finds that firms that are providers are indeed an under‐researched and important phenomenon for firms' innovation activities. Compared to receivers of knowledge, the providers are younger, have a higher R&D intensity, adopt more open innovation practices, have higher absorptive capacity, and fewer barriers toward knowledge sharing as demonstrated by the NIH and NSH syndromes. Finally, although only tentatively, the paper finds that the provider firms are more product innovative compared to nonproviders. The paper further finds that more projects, more embedded relationships, and mutual rather than one‐way exchange relationships significantly raise the probability that a firm experiences a substantial benefit from providing to other firms' new product development projects. The overall ambition of the paper at this point is to inspire other researchers to pursue the agenda on the provider perspective for future research. To support such research, the paper suggests a broadening of the research perspectives from the receiver of knowledge, in the literature on interorganizational relationships and open innovation, to include the provider, and even suggests some preliminary ideas for such research. Hence, the contribution of this paper lies not only in opening a new research topic but also in identifying some first characteristics of the phenomenon adding a substantial perspective to the literature on open innovation and interorganizational relationships. The paper formulates three indicative recommendations for managers that consider becoming a provider to other firms' NPD.     

Incubation of an industry: Heterogeneous knowledge bases and modes of value capture

Research summary : We examine firms' technological investments during an industry's incubation stage—the period between a technological breakthrough and the first instance of its commercialization. Using the agricultural biotechnology context, we develop stylized findings regarding the understudied knowledge evolution preceding product evolution in an industry's life cycle, the trend and diversity of firms undertaking technological investments in anticipation of industry emergence, their leverage of markets for technology and corporate control, and their use of alternative modes of value capture. We juxtapose these stylized findings with existing literature to identify new theoretical insights, and set the stage for future scholarly work to develop and test new theories for the incubation period, examine its existence in other industries, and study its impact on subsequent firm and industry evolution. M anagerial summary : New technological breakthroughs present managers of existing firms and aspiring entrepreneurs with opportunities to create altogether new industries. During the vibrant incubation period, we find that multiple firms capitalize on diverse knowledge bases to shape the industry's knowledge evolution and also capture economic value in diverse ways. Existing firms in the obsolescing industry are more likely to become targets in acquisitions given their complementary knowledge. Science‐based start‐ups are more likely to engage in acquisitions and collaborations with established firms. Diversifying firms are more likely to commercialize products after leveraging of internal development, acquisitions, and alliances. Our study highlights the importance for managers to think about “success” and “failure” across multiple yardsticks of performance, rather than only as product commercialization as the sole goal. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The network mediation of an incubator: How does it enable or constrain the development of incubator firms' business networks?

Incubators are organisations or structures that usually offer five types of services in order to accelerate start-up development: access to physical resources, administrative services, access to financial resources, assistance with start-up procedures and access to networks. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the mediating role of the incubator. More specifically, it examines how the incubator's mediation is related to incubator firms' development of broader business networks. The primary data comprised 34 face-to-face interviews with 19 respondents from an incubator and its incubator firms and with other actors with which the incubator had a relationship. The paper offers three conclusions concerning how the network horizon influences the incubator's capacity to mediate relationships, the necessity for incubator firms to be proactive in order to utilise the mediation activities of the incubator and the influence of public-funding agencies in the development of incubator firms, which is based on their role as third actors in connected business relationships.     

How do international joint ventures create shareholder value?

This study attempts to identify conditions under which announcements of international joint venture (JV) formation lead to increases in shareholder value of participating U.S. firms. It does so by combining the singular theoretical foci of previous work on the topic and specifying previously unconsidered, but conceptually important, influences on firms' expected JV performance. The study's findings indicate support for the hypothesized effect of variables in partners' task‐related, competitive, and structural context(s), but not those in these firms' partner‐related and institutional context(s). Specifically, partner–venture business relatedness, the pursuit of R&D‐oriented activity, greater equity ownership, and large firm size, all are found to have a positive impact on firms' JV‐based value creation. Although this study finds support for the performance impact of firm‐level competition, the direction of this impact is contrary to that hypothesized. No support is found for hypothesized effect of partner–partner business relatedness, previous JV experience, partners' relative firm size, (national) cultural relatedness, and JV host country political risk. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Can we build it? Yes,we can!” complexities of resource re-deployment to fight pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries asked their domestic firms to produce various medical equipment. Many firms promised to do so, including redesigns of existing ventilators or designing new ones. Despite these firms' enthusiasm, however, many of their attempts at being resourceful- through deploying their resources in activities beyond their current use- were unsuccessful. Our study attempts to explain why the success of these efforts varied. We integrate concepts of resourcefulness, managerial cognition, and product architecture to develop a typology of resourcing approaches, using a firm's characteristics and resources, its interpretative frames, and the technical and regulatory characteristics of the product being resourced for as boundary conditions. We illustrate our theorizing through case studies on the manufacturing of face shields, hand sanitiser, face masks, and medical ventilators. Our study provides important implications for firms attempting to deploy their resources in new contexts.     

Alliance Concentration in Multinational Companies: Examining Alliance Portfolios,Firm Structure,and Firm Performance

Research summary: This article explores the distribution of alliances across firms' internal structure. Focusing on multinational companies, we examine the impact of alliance portfolio concentration—i.e., the extent to which alliances are concentrated within a limited number of geographic units—on focal firms' performance. Relying on Knowledge‐Based View (KBV) insights, we hypothesize that an increase in alliance portfolio concentration positively influences firm performance and that alliance portfolio size negatively moderates this relationship. Our empirical results enrich the emerging capability perspective on alliance portfolios, point to the relevance of conceptualizing focal firms in alliance portfolio research as polylithic entities instead of monolithic ones, and provide new insights into how firms create value by potentially recombining externally accessed knowledge. Managerial summary: In the setting of multinational companies, we examine whether alliance activities are concentrated in a limited number of subsidiaries or are highly dispersed across multiple subsidiaries. We find that, over time, firms exhibit different patterns in terms of alliance portfolio concentration. In addition, the results show that, for MNCs with a relatively small alliance portfolio, an increase in alliance portfolio concentration is positively related to their financial performance. However, when MNCs' alliance portfolios are relatively large, the relationship between alliance portfolio concentration and firm performance becomes negative. Jointly, these findings suggest that the distribution of alliances across firms' internal structure is an important factor in shaping potential knowledge recombination benefits from alliance portfolios. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do‐no‐harm versus do‐good social responsibility: Attributional thinking and the liability of foreignness

Research summary: The efforts of multinational corporations to be socially responsible do not always engender positive evaluations from overseas stakeholders. Drawing on attribution theory, we argue that two heuristics guide stakeholders in evaluating firms' social performance: foreignness and the valence of firms' social responsibility. We provide evidence from a field study of secondary stakeholders and an experimental study involving 129 non‐governmental organizations. Consistent with attribution theory, the liability of foreignness is minimized when firms engage in “do‐good” social responsibility (focused on proactive engagement creating positive externalities) but is substantial when firms engage in “do‐no‐harm” social responsibility (focused on attenuating negative externalities). In online supporting information, Appendix S1, we demonstrate that these evaluations have consequences for whether stakeholders subsequently cooperate, or sow conflict, with firms. Managerial summary: There is no guarantee that efforts to be socially responsible will improve multinational corporations' relations with overseas stakeholders, such as customers, governments, and activists. In a field study and an experiment, we unpack when foreign firms suffer from harsh stakeholder evaluations. Foreign firms especially suffer from harsh evaluations when they conduct “do‐no‐harm” CSR rather than “do‐good” CSR. Stakeholders attribute the motive for foreign firms' do‐no‐harm CSR to managerial interests and shareholder pressures, perceiving a wedge between managers and owners (who may be unmotivated to reduce the negative impacts of their business activities) and local stakeholders (who bear the social costs). A practical implication is that foreign firms gain more from highlighting do‐good rather than do‐(no)‐harm CSR initiatives. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding types of organizational networking behaviors in the UK manufacturing sector

This research is aimed at understanding firms' different types of ‘networking behaviors’, i.e., how and why firms affect their strategic network position by activities/routines/practices aimed not just at their business partners, but beyond such direct relationships. Thus, we adopt a network perspective to examine how firms exploit their webs of direct and indirect business relationships in order to assess and embrace the potential opportunities and constraints in the network. Based on the industrial network approach (INA), this exploratory research specifically focuses on networking behaviors in the UK manufacturing sector. Thirty-one semi-structured interviews with executive managers from fifteen firms were conducted. We identify four types of organizational networking behaviors by the way in which firms utilize their web of relationships to achieve certain goals. By using the concept of networking behaviors based on the INA as well as the strong-and-weak-tie argument in economic sociology, purposeful networking behaviors can be categorized into the following: information acquisition, opportunity enabling, strong-tie resource mobilization and weak-tie resource mobilization. These four ‘types’ of organizational networking behaviors provide a deeper understanding of how firms operating in business-to-business exchanges relate to and exploit their webs of direct and indirect relationships, taking into consideration the embeddedness and interconnectedness of the network context.     

Choosing the right target: Relative preferences for resource similarity and complementarity in acquisition choice

Research summary : Corporate acquisition is a popular strategic option for firms seeking new resources. However, little research exists on the question of why one firm is chosen over another. We develop a model relating characteristics of similarity and complementarity between acquirers' and target firms' key resources, including their products and R&D pipelines, to the likelihood of the acquirers choosing a particular firm. We construct measures of similarity and complementarity between and across products and R&D pipelines, and test their effects using a novel application of the choice model. Findings reveal that acquirers view similarity and complementarity differently, based on the resource they are comparing. When making comparisons to their own R&D pipelines, acquirers prefer similarity over complementarity whereas when making comparisons to their product portfolios, they prefer complementarity over similarity. Managerial summary : Corporate acquisition is a popular way for firms to grow and obtain innovative resources. However, we know little about why acquirers choose one firm over another. We capture the influence of similarity and complementarity between acquirers' and target firms' products (current innovative value) and R&D pipelines (future innovative value) on whether a particular target firm is acquired. Insights from the pharmaceutical industry reveal that acquirers value similarity and complementarity in target firms differently, based on whether the comparison being made is with respect to their products or their R&D pipelines. Regarding their R&D pipelines, acquirers prefer that the target firm has similar, rather than complementary, resources. However, the opposite is true concerning their own products: acquirers prefer that the target firm has complementary, versus similar, resources. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Where can capabilities come from? network ties and capability acquisition in business groups

While strategy researchers have devoted considerable attention to the role of firm‐specific capabilities in the pursuit of competitive advantage, less attention has been directed at how firms obtain these capabilities from outside their boundaries. In this study, we examine how firms' multiplex network ties in business groups represent one important source of capability acquisition. Our focus allows us to go beyond the traditional focus on network structure and offer a novel contingency model that specifies how different types of network ties (e.g., buyer‐supplier, equity, and director), individually and in complementary combination, will differentially affect the process of R&D capability acquisition. We also offer an original analysis of how other aspects of network structure (i.e., network density) in business groups affect the efficacy of network ties on R&D capability. Empirically, we provide an original contribution to the capabilities literature by utilizing a stochastic frontier estimation to rigorously measure firm capabilities, and we demonstrate the value of this approach using longitudinal data on business groups in emerging economies. We close by discussing the implications of our supportive results for future research on firm capabilities, organizational networks, and business groups. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond the retention—acquisition trade-off: Capabilities of ambidextrous sales organizations

Sales organizations aim to grow their firms' business by acquiring new customers while retaining their existing ones. Although customer acquisition and retention are complementary processes, they involve different sales process capabilities that often compete for investments. However, firms that succeed in effectively combining these capabilities are “ambidextrous” and will enjoy superior growth and profits. Although developing ambidexterity is a fundamental sales management task, it has received little attention in research. Based on the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability framework we identify a set of organizational sales capabilities that can help sales organizations' joint management of acquisition and retention capabilities, and explain their influence drawing on Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory. Survey and time-lagged archival performance data from 174 firms provide an empirical test of the conceptual model and hypotheses developed. Results confirm that incentive management, cross functional cooperation, and the interaction of cross functional cooperation and sales training capabilities are positively correlated with sales organization ambidexterity. In addition, we find a positive correlation of customer prioritization on ambidextrous selling. Results confirm that firms with high levels and aligned acquisition and retention capabilities enjoy superior organic growth. However, contrary to expectation, increases in profit growth are only accomplished if acquisition capabilities are high.