Ambidextrous innovation orientation effected by the digital transformation: A quantitative research on fashion SMEs

This study introduces a new perspective on ambidextrous innovation orientation, looking at how the current digital transformation is accepted in the fashion industry in Italy. Ambidextrous innovation orientation is thus enriched with the use of new technologies and introduces incremental and radical innovations through the combination of exploitation and exploration processes. These new technologies can be seen in the form of online platforms such as social media networks, which generate self-disruption in all industries, leading to a revival of business process management firms’ business process management. Although small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the fashion industry were initially reluctant to accept this change due to their artisanal and handmade characteristics, nowadays this is one of the most avant-garde and technological sectors. Therefore, this form of business is considered as a fruitful context for analysing the effect of four dimensions of social media networks on ambidextrous innovation orientation: the structural dimension; the relational behaviour dimension; the cognitive dimension; and knowledge transfer practices. Empirically, a regression methodology has been applied to a sample of 853 SMEs in the fashion industry. The results demonstrated that social media platforms serve as spaces for seeking out innovation (structural dimension) where interaction with customers can occur (relational dimension) to develop and collect innovation inputs that will obviously depend on the knowledge mind-sets of the customers concerned (cognitive dimension). Subsequently, the external knowledge collected will need to be combined with the internal knowledge in order to search for innovation (knowledge transfer/co-creation).