Strategies for Sustainable Business Development: Utilizing Consulting and Innovation Activities

Abstract

This study explores strategies for sustainable business development via the process and performance of business consulting by using 200 samples of different industry sectors in South Korea. The main purposes of this paper are to build the consulting model framework and to analyze the relationships between consulting factors and consulting performance for establishing strategies for sustainable business development. First, the findings show that the support of CEOs for consulting projects and the innovation activities via exploration and exploitation (and ambidexterity) have higher impacts on the contribution to business performance than other consulting factors. Similarly, according to the results of IPMA, these variables are placed in a group of high importance and performance, so the findings indicate that the support of CEO and innovation activities play a central role in the consulting model. Second, the competency of CEOs for recognizing the awareness of newly changing market conditions and the importance of utilizing business consulting can serve as an engine to reach their sustainable business development. Moreover, the firms’ innovation activities via business consulting can increase their ability to utilize and absorb the external resources and knowledge for establishing strategies for sustainable business development. These abilities are used not only to induce their business innovation internally but also to pioneer new market opportunities amid a rapidly changing market environment.

Effects of internal and external factors on business performance of start-ups in South Korea: The engine of new market dynamics

“…Moreover, another edge of the nascent entrepreneurial behaviors based on innovation refers the characteristics of exploitation, which is to utilize existing resources and information for creating new products and processes. 44 –46 Moreover, exploitation also takes into account the ability for applying existing knowledge into the start-ups’ business strategies, management plans, and even innovation activities. 47…”

Linking Organizational Ambidexterity and Performance: The Drivers of Sustainability in High-Tech Firms

“…They mainly deal with these by adaptive processes-firms have the ability to apply their existing assets, status, and capacity to explore new technologies and markets to construct and reconstruct organizational resources to pursue existing and new opportunities [18][19][20][21]. As elaborated on by some scholars engaging in organizational learning theory research, and based on the research of Yamakawa et al [21], exploration creates something other than the existing knowledge of an organization (e.g., new knowledge) by using new methods to experiment with technologies, business processes, or markets and to search for new organizational practices, norms, and systems [22][23][24]. This theory assumes that exploitation builds trust in certain of the firm's activities, such as the refining of existing knowledge [21], the use and improvement of existing capabilities, and a focus on technologies, processes, and products within existing markets [5].…”

“…Therefore, exploration enables firms to realize ongoing market growth through overcoming path-dependencies and inertia. The exploration of new resources and capabilities through the development of new products can improve proximity [4,[22][23][24] and the response to local customers, and can increase the speed to market [5,42]. However, if firms seldom engage in exploitation or activities related to organizational survival (threshold capabilities, consolidated capabilities, the refining or expansion of existing capabilities, technologies, and models), this may reduce their chance of survival [28].…”

The Dynamic Process of Ambidexterity in Eco-Innovation

“…Meanwhile, exploitation is the capacity to apply actual knowledge to the search for efficiency and/or in developing the actual market [24,25,[30][31][32]. Some authors have proposed that a sequential orientation of exploration and exploitation can be called ambidexterity [33]; others have demonstrated the relevance of ambidexterity's dynamicity [34,35], suggesting the importance of a balanced orientation to exploitation and exploration [36,37]. The relevance of ambidexterity to developing a competitive advantage has hardly been analyzed in the area of sustainability [38], nor have researchers studied how green innovation influences the dynamic results of exploration and exploitation over time.…”

“…To manage their eco-innovations, firms must modify their routines and dynamize their capabilities [54]. Our study considers the development of dynamic capabilities in the firm as decisions that seek a balance [36]. At times, firms decide to introduce new products to the market and thus to transform their routines; at others, they choose not to modify products and to preserve specific routines while waiting for the right moment to introduce new products.…”