Cultivating Ambidexterity Through a Paradox Pedagogy: A Developmental Model for Innovative Problem-Solving

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report highlights the importance of innovative problem-solving skills. Paradox literature suggests that managing tensions between competing exploration and exploitation demands, or ambidexterity, is essential in innovation contexts such as these. Yet little is known about how to design learning experiences that cultivate an ambidextrous mindset and behaviors. This mixed-methods study developed and evaluated a paradox pedagogy designed to build ambidexterity competence and capabilities in management education, delivered through a workshop for business students. Competence was assessed through changes in awareness and self-efficacy, and capabilities through the originality and usefulness of the solutions produced. Results showed that the pedagogical model enhanced competence and capabilities, supported by four key pedagogical features: experience, exposure, engagement and extension. Emergent findings also revealed two developmental processes that explain how ambidexterity develops and is enacted: reflexive agility (mindset) and adaptive integration (behavior). These processes operated through interconnected preparation and action phases, forming a recursive feedback loop that illuminates the microfoundations of ambidexterity. The study contributes to management education by offering an evidence-based, sequenced paradox pedagogy for developing innovative problem-solving. It also extends our understanding of how paradox theory can be applied in management education by clarifying how ambidextrous mindset and behavior co-evolve.