Journal of Business and Management Sciences, 2018, Vol. 6, No. 4, 137-142 Available online at http://pubs.sciepub.com/jbms/6/4/1 ©Science and Education Publishing DOI:10.12691/jbms-6-4-1 Integrating Knowledge from Network: How Explorative/Exploitative Innovations are Balanced Dan-Wei Wen * , Shih-Chieh Fang Department of Business Administration, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan *Corresponding author: marian.wen@gmail.com Received July 05, 2018; Revised August 06, 2018; Accepted August 15, 2018 Abstract Despite consensus on the importance of balancing explorative and exploitative innovations, how organizations achieve so is unclear. This research argues that knowledge integration is the fundamental capability while organizations‟ networks put their oar in the process. In order to validate our inference, this research holds preliminary interviews on an innovative triangular cooperation then further generate a computer simulation analysis. Keywords: knowledge integration, ambidextrous innovation, computer simulation, exploration/exploitation Cite This Article: Dan-Wei Wen, and Shih-Chieh Fang, “Integrating Knowledge from Network: How Explorative/Exploitative Innovations are Balanced.” Journal of Business and Management Sciences, vol. 6, no. 4 (2018): 137-142. doi: 10.12691/jbms-6-4-1. 1. Introduction Organizations are faced with various kinds of tensions in resources allocation, organizational design and other decision makings. One of the most critical kinds is that between exploitation and exploration. Considering both short-term efficiency and long-term survival, organizations need to reach balanced innovation between exploitation and exploration [1]. Despite multiple discussion regarding domains to achieve ambidextrous innovation, the mechanism through which firms can achieve balanced exploitation and exploration remains room for further investigation [2]. Based on different aspects to investigation into balancing exploitation and exploration, one important consensus is that “knowledge” plays a key role. In order to accomplish an innovation task, multi-dimensional knowledge is required and successful decomposing of the original knowledge as well as combining the decomposed knowledge to form the required (possibly new) knowledge is essential. Hereby, knowledge integration represents a particular mechanism to achieve balanced exploitation and exploration [3]. On the other hand, since knowledge variety is essential to fulfill balanced innovation task, the abundance of knowledge source becomes critical. Under resources constraint, some of the required knowledge may have already been possessed by the organization while some is to be found. In searching of the needed knowledge, the social network provides the most efficient source [4], especially efficient governance mode for tacit knowledge exchange [5] Because the embedded nature of tacit knowledge makes it either hard to be transacted through market mechanism or acquired through organizational hierarchy. Thus, social network cooperation provides the better means for tacit knowledge source. Taking the intense market competition into account, organizations are required to respond to fluctuations within limited time. This has made the importance of both knowledge integration and access to network resources crucial [6]. To put it short, if an organization is better at exploitation work, gaining knowledge from other organizations to complement its exploration need would be more effective than other forms of transaction [3], and vice versa. In the aspect, the social network resembles the resources bed for an organization. As such, the characteristics and features of the network will have influences upon the impact of knowledge integration on an organization‟s ambidextrous innovation. In order to investigate how the process takes place, agent-based model is especially suitable for this research. Since computer simulation can assist us in understanding how the inter- and intra- organizational interactions take place, and the process of knowledge integration, also knowledge integration involves longitudinal and feed- back effects, this research adopts agent-based simulation as the research methodology [1,7,8,9]. 2. Literature Review 2.1. Balancing Exploration and Exploitation in Innovation Organizations that are capable of balancing between two opposite elements of organizations are “ambidextrous” [10]. An organization is bounded to making decisions, thus involve making choices between alternatives. While some of these “choices” are mutually exclusive and have tension in nature. Taking corporate slack for example, having more slack is a means for organizations to be more