Digitalization, Open Innovation, Ambidexterity, and Green Innovation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Narrative Review and New Perspectives

Ambidexterity is one of the major themes in business administration in recent years, and ambidexterity is being actively studied in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are considered difficult to achieve due to lack of resources. However, there have been no consistent results on the impact of ambidexterity on performance such as corporate earnings, making it difficult to argue that ambidexterity should be pursued at any time and in any circumstances. Therefore, this study provides a narrative review of related papers from January 2020 to the present, and confirms that SMEs and open innovation (OI) are involved in ambidexterity, and that their combination may lead to the solution of contemporary issues through green innovation, etc. This suggests that when discussing the pros and cons of ambidexterity in SMEs, the conclusions differ depending on whether one places emphasis on micro, short-term goals such as increasing immediate sales, or macro, long-term goals such as solving national and global issues, and therefore ambidexterity should be treated as an axis for finding a compromise between individual players and the whole. This study shows the legitimacy of the government providing financial or human support for open innovation and digitalization to support ambidexterity in SMEs.