Ambidextrous organizations are those that can balance speed and creativity with scale and productivity. These companies establish an equilibrium between the two dimensions, with a high emphasis on both. Most companies focus on one or the other, but those that excel in both are rare. Companies that emphasize speed and creativity have strong capabilities in anticipation, innovation, and adaptation, resulting in corporate attributes such as insight and foresight, inspiration and passion, or trial and error. Companies that excel in scale and productivity have strong capabilities in planning, optimization, and leveraging, resulting in characteristics such as formalization and compliance, controlling and monitoring, and history and experience. An example of an ambidextrous organization is Amazon, which is always searching for innovative business ideas and has a well-established culture of invention, curiosity, and a bias for action. At the same time, Amazon has also proven itself to be a champion of productivity, with its logistics and internal processes of scaling new business models tailored for efficiency and standardization.
