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Beedie School of Business News

Opinion: As host to top-ranked research universities, British Columbia stands much to gain from fostering talented young people By Ian McCarthy, Vancouver Sun As a business school professor, one of the questions I hear most often from industry and government leaders in their effort to bolster economic growth, is: “Can we teach entrepreneurship and innovation?” It is a question that pops up with regularity, in part because there is a perception that great entrepreneurs and […]

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Beedie School of Business News

Can ambidexterity, a trait that’s often associated with exceptional athletes, be applied to organizations — from biotech companies to government agencies — immersed in research and development? It’s a question recently put forth by researchers Ian McCarthy and Brian Gordon from the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University.

Their article, entitled “Achieving contextual ambidexterity in R&D organizations: a management control system approach,” was published in the journal R&D Management. It points out that these organizations tend to find themselves juggling two contradictory modes of learning: ‘exploration’, a long-term activity involving risk and experimentation, and ‘exploitation’, characterized by short-term time horizons and a focus on refinement and efficiency.

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