Harvard Business School
The question at the center of the work
How periods of incremental change are interrupted by discontinuities that make established capabilities less valuable.
How distinct structures, measures and capabilities allow exploration and exploitation to coexist within one enterprise.
How leadership teams hold competing demands together, make resource choices and create a shared strategic intent.
How organizational identity and boundaries shape whether firms recognize, adopt and scale unfamiliar ideas.
Explore and exploit require different organizational arrangements.
The core is designed for reliability and improvement. A new business is designed to learn under uncertainty.
Separation is necessary, but never sufficient.
The new business needs protection from the core and deliberate access to customers, expertise, technology and other assets.
The senior team holds the two agendas together.
Leaders must decide where to integrate, how to allocate resources and which evidence warrants further commitment.
Renewal depends on identity as well as structure.
A credible account of what the organization is—and can become—helps people support change without discarding what matters.
Start here
Harvard Business Review · 2004
A concise account of why breakthrough work needs a distinct organization and active integration by the senior team.
Leadership
Harvard Business Review · 2011
Read this for the leadership practices required to manage contradictions rather than force a false choice between them.
Book
Charles O’Reilly and Michael Tushman · 2021
The fullest practical account of how established companies can exploit current strengths while exploring new businesses.
Book
Andrew Binns, Charles O’Reilly and Michael Tushman · 2022
A guide to the people and systems that turn an opportunity inside an established company into a business at scale.
Research review
Academy of Management Perspectives · 2013
A deeper synthesis of the evidence, boundary conditions and unresolved questions behind the concept.
Research in practice
California Management Review · 2011
A multi-company study of what managers actually did when implementing ambidextrous designs.
HBS case
Harvard Business School case
A recent case about leading renewal in a large incumbent while preserving the capabilities needed to perform.
HBS case
Harvard Business School case
A case for examining how an established enterprise organizes, leads and connects an emerging opportunity to the core.
HBR article
Harvard Business Review · 2016
A practical account of how leaders work with persistent contradictions instead of treating them as choices that can be settled once.
Classic book
Michael Tushman and Charles O’Reilly
The foundational book connecting innovation streams, organization design, culture and leadership through periods of stability and change.
Complete books and HBR articles
The guided selections above are a place to begin. The complete verified record below brings together Michael Tushman’s books and Harvard Business Review articles.
BOOKS
2022
Andrew Binns, Charles A. O’Reilly and Michael L. Tushman
Wiley
2016 first edition · 2021 second edition
Charles A. O’Reilly and Michael L. Tushman
Stanford Business Books
2015
Rebecca Henderson, Ranjay Gulati and Michael L. Tushman, editors
Oxford University Press
1997 first edition · 2004 second edition
Michael L. Tushman and Philip Anderson, editors
Oxford University Press
1997 first edition · 2002 revised edition
Michael L. Tushman and Charles A. O’Reilly
Harvard Business School Press
1998
David A. Nadler and Michael L. Tushman
Oxford University Press
1998
Donald C. Hambrick, David A. Nadler and Michael L. Tushman
Harvard Business School Press
1989
Michael L. Tushman, Charles A. O’Reilly and David A. Nadler, editors
Ballinger
1982 first edition · 1988 second edition
1988
David A. Nadler and Michael L. Tushman
Scott Foresman
1980
David A. Nadler, Michael L. Tushman and D. Hatvany
Little, Brown
1974
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
2025 · May–June
Ivanka Visnjic, Felipe Monteiro and Michael L. Tushman
2019
Marya Besharov, Wendy K. Smith and Michael L. Tushman
2018
Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Michael L. Tushman and Karim R. Lakhani
2017 · Digital article
Michael L. Tushman, Anna Kahn, Mary Elizabeth Porray and Andy Binns
2017
Michael L. Tushman, Anna Kahn, Mary Elizabeth Porray and Andy Binns
2017
Michael L. Tushman, Anna Kahn, Mary Elizabeth Porray and Andy Binns
2016 · May
Wendy K. Smith, Marianne W. Lewis and Michael L. Tushman
2016
Michael L. Tushman
2013
Michael L. Tushman
2012
Michael L. Tushman
2011 · June
Michael L. Tushman, Wendy K. Smith and Andrew Binns
2010 · Digital article
Michael L. Tushman
2008 · July–August
Adam M. Kleinbaum and Michael L. Tushman
2004 · April
Charles A. O’Reilly and Michael L. Tushman
Where does the new business need different measures, talent, processes or investment criteria?
Which assets of the core create an advantage, and how will access to them be governed?
Who resolves conflicts over customers, talent, funding and leadership attention?
What evidence will justify further investment, a change in direction or a decision to stop?
What shared identity allows people to support both today’s commitments and tomorrow’s possibilities?