Competition and Complementation of Exploration and Exploitation and the Achievement of Radical Innovation: The Moderating Effect of Learning Behavior and Promotion Focus

We aim to address inconsistencies in the research literature on whether exploration and exploitation compete with or complement each other in their effect on radically innovative team outcomes. This study takes into consideration the moderating effect of team learning behavior, which includes seeking or providing feedback, sharing information and elaborating task-relevant information, and team promotion focus, which refers to the motivation for innovation. Using results obtained from 108 research and development teams from six high-tech organizations, our findings show two ways to achieve radical innovation performance. Both are characterized by a high level of exploration; however, the level of exploitation and of learning behavior in each of them is either high or low. Against our expectations, promotion focus does not modify the effect of exploration and exploitation on radical innovation performance. While promotion focus is usually assumed to be positively associated with team innovation, we counterintuitively show that when the level of exploration is high, a low (compared to high) level of promotion focus leads to increased radical innovation.