Innovation-branding: should all firms be equally ambidextrous?

Abstract

Purpose

The fundamental question asked in this study is – should all firms engage in innovation and branding activities to the same extent to achieve their goals? The purpose of this paper is to answer this question, a strategic typology that integrates branding and innovation (BI) from an organizational ambidexterity perspective is proposed.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper builds theory by proposing a typology. Integrating the literature on BI, organizational ambidexterity and resource/knowledge-based view of firms, this study posits that to create a value proposition, a firm could choose to engage in innovation and branding activities in a variety of ways depending on their dominant strategic orientation along two dimensions of ambidexterity.

Findings

The four proposed typical branding-innovation orientations are low innovation × low branding; low innovation × high branding; high innovation × low branding; and high innovation × high branding.

Practical implications

A firm should choose its dominant strategic orientation depending on conditions such as market, consumers, needs and demand and resources.

Originality/value

By framing the innovation-branding paradox within an organizational ambidexterity framework, the proposed typology helps integrate two complementary and yet conflicting organizational functions by shifting the focus from an operational to a strategic level.

Citation

Paswan, A.K., Guzmán, F. and Pei, Z. (2021), "Innovation-branding: should all firms be equally ambidextrous?", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 754-767. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-07-2019-2476