The Conceptual Definition and Future Study Plan for Exploration and Exploitation Studies

Strategies for Sustainable Business Development: Utilizing Consulting and Innovation Activities

“…Moreover, following previous studies, the exploration and exploitation are basically connected with the process of innovation and slack resources [23][24][25]55,56]. Since exploration and exploitation can be defined as opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking, respectively [42,[57][58][59], those are affiliated with the firms' innovation system and affect their business performance [23][24][25]56,60,61]. Yet, each exploration and exploitation seems to have different impacts on contribution to business performance.…”

“…According to Siren et al [42], although there is not much empirical evidence that the direct effects of exploration and exploitation on the firms' profit performance because those are generally recognized as mediating constructs, those are still the core elements of firm's business strategies and innovation performance [54]. Moreover, following previous studies, the exploration and exploitation are basically connected with the process of innovation and slack resources [23][24][25]55,56]. Since exploration and exploitation can be defined as opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking, respectively [42,[57][58][59], those are affiliated with the firms' innovation system and affect their business performance [23][24][25]56,60,61].…”

“…This seminal paper has been generating numerous studies related with innovation techniques [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. First of all, the general definition of exploration presents one aspect of characteristics of innovation which includes the ability to search for new knowledge, experimentation, variation, risk-loving, future demand, emerging markets, and so on [23,24,28,31,33,42]. In contrast, exploitation, which is also known as another aspect of characteristics of innovation, is defined as the ability to utilize for existing knowledge, efficiency, risk-neutral or risk-avoiding, refinement of original resources, and so on [23,[26][27][28]30,32].…”

“…tacit knowledge), it has been much paid attention to by many researchers, industrial stakeholder, and even policy makers for understanding the importance of research and development (R and D) and creating a new technology and process [21,22]. In general, the proxy variables of innovation activities such as exploration and exploitation for seeking new knowledge and utilizing existing knowledge, respectively [23][24][25] are the most useful indicators for solving the puzzle of the consulting process and evaluating a firm's innovation system that contributes to the business performance [26][27][28][29]. However, due to the innovation ambidexterity, it is highly probable that the relationships between innovation activities and consulting factors have somewhat different impacts on the consulting performance.…”

The Dynamic Process of Ambidexterity in Eco-Innovation

“…The exploration-exploitation relationship has been widely studied. Exploration is considered to be the search for new knowledge and/or new markets [24][25][26][27][28][29]. 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].…”