Speaker:   Prof. Dragos Vieru

Abstract:   The ability to combine exploitation, (i.e. optimizing existing processes and products), and exploration, (i.e. searching for new and innovative approaches towards technology, business processes, or markets), is called ambidexterity and seen as important driver of sustainable economic success. We study, how companies use interorganizational collaboration in order to efficiently balance exploration and exploitation and extend their ambidexterous capabilities in the context of small and medium size IT service providers.
Preliminary findings suggest that the companies we have studied are aware of the challenge and have found different practices to ensure not only enough space for exploration with partners but also to use innovation to improve their routine operations.

Authors:   Prof. D. Vieru, TELUQ University, Montréal and Prof. S. Klein, WWU Münster

Short Bio:  Dragos Vieru is a Full Professor of Information Technology at the TELUQ University. He holds a Ph.D. degree in IT from HEC Montreal and a M.Sc. degree in Management of Information Systems from John Molson School of Business, Montreal, Canada. His research interests are in the areas of IT-enabled organizational change, knowledge sharing, and IT sourcing. Dragos Vieru has published articles in several academic journals, notably in the Journal of Knowledge Management, in the International Journal of Information Management, and in the Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases. His research has been presented at several major international conferences in IS, such as ICIS, AMCIS, HICSS, and ASAC. He is the chair of the Social-Technical Issues in Organizational Information Technologies mini-track at Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).  Prior to joining academia, he spent over 15 years in the Canadian public healthcare sector as an IT project manager.