Balancing Exploration and Exploitation Through Open Innovation in the Automotive Domain - Focus on SMEs

The automotive domain is one of Europe's key drivers of innovation. This sector is undergoing a broad disruptive reorganisation. Competition is enticed by multiple emerging technologies, such as IoT. Thus, the industry is evolving at a swift pace. The need to continually reinvent and modernise organisations and their portfolios is not new. However, the speed at which this once so stable and established industry is changing presents unique challenges. The innovators' dilemma rises from the paradox in which established organisations become victims of their success and become insignificant despite the boom of their established business. The impact of the research and development of new technologies is often not realised as organisations pour all resources into their current success model. This paper aims to provide suitable recommendations for implementing the organisational principle of ambidexterity in small and medium enterprises (SME) to better transfer and exploit the potentials of R&D projects or new technologies.