Corporate Venture Capitalists’ Ambidexterity: Myth or Truth?

A growing number of studies highlight how organizational ambidexterity is vital for business competitive advantage.Although the number of studies on ambidexterity has substantially expanded in the past few years, the results have often beendisappointing, particularly for focalized segments of organizations.Starting from these considerations, this paper analyzes corporateventure capitalists’ (CVCs) activities. Even though the most important research on the ambidexterity of CVCs was conducted byHill and Birkinshaw in 2014, the ambidexterity of CVCs has sofar been studied very little. Starting from an analysis of quantitative data, at both the descriptive and inferential levels, this paperaims at building a conceptual contextualization to understand howCVCs can be considered with regard to ambidexterity (ambidextrous, hybrid, or dis-ambidextrous, as proposed in this paper) andhow they can manifest this capability.