International comparative study on open innovation from the viewpoint of organisational ability, including research on corporation ambidexterity

When the asset bubble burst in the early 1990s in Japan, a long period of economic stagnation followed. Professor Toshiro Kita, Graduate School of Management, Doshisha University, Japan, believes a lack of understanding of the importance of business ambidexterity contributed to this difficult period for Japanese firms and that understanding and utilising ambidexterity could have significant benefits for businesses. Kita is interested in innovation management and the ways in which the application of ambidexterity can help businesses. He believes that businesses can thrive by adopting the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop alongside the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle and his work also looks at other aspects of innovation management, such as entrepreneurship, disruptive innovation and corporate culture and cognitive bias, as well as innovation management in the context of COVID-19. This later strand of research involves looking at how ambidexterity can help businesses to thrive in the current challenging climate. A recent important finding for Kita, which emerged from his project 'Study on Ambidextrous Capabilities of Japanese Electronics Firms' was that firms that were performing well conducted exploration during phases of growth and exploitation during phases of decline and this was the opposite way round for firms performing poorly. This served to highlight how exploration and exploitation can be successfully implemented. Through hosting workshops and seminars Kita shares his findings and knowledge and he also collaborates with industry groups.