From Experimentation to Strategy: The Ambidextrous Balancing Act of Developing News Recommender Systems

Despite advances in news recommender systems (NRS) research, their applicationin news organisations remains limited, hampered by practical obstacles and organisationalchallenges. This study applies the multi-stakeholder framework (Smets etal., 2022) alongside ambidexterity theory to analyse the complex decision-makingdynamics in applying NRS within two large commercial news organisations. Basedon 11 in-depth interviews with different stakeholders, two “balancing acts” emerged.The first is stakeholder alignment through two strategies: knowledge managementwith dummy-proof presentations and “showcasing success” to help increase stakeholderbuy-in for NRS. The second balancing act is managing trade-offs betweenexploration and exploitation in a roadmap prepared by the multidisciplinary teamof product owners (POs), ensuring a balanced allocation of resources for NRS innovationand optimization. This research shows how organisational ambidexteritysupports successful technology integration and provides insights for implementingemerging technologies in complex news media environments.