Exploring for new possibilities and exploiting current certainties are two critically important, yet often conflicting, tasks carried out by organizations. Past research has examined numerous ways to balance and integrate these tasks, however little attention has been paid to using inter-organizational networks to help resolve this conflict. To help address this shortcoming, we draw on the network literature to develop hypotheses concerning the effect of prominent network characteristics, including closure, centrality, and diversity on organizations’ abilities to effectively explore and exploit. We test these hypotheses in a sample of 168 firms active in publishing, patenting and commercializing technologies in the field of green chemistry.
