The Application of Ambidextrous Organizational Design on the Founding of an Autonomous Vehicle Development Research Team – A Case Study

Organizations in both academia and industry have struggled with incorporating radical innovation structures within their established frameworks. This paper analyses the practical applications of recently proposed methods of organizational design in highly sophisticated engineering organizations, particularly when introducing a new, disruptive project that requires a different mentality than that of the parent organization. Recent literature has proposed an approach called the ambidextrous organization for these use cases. Therefore, in order to effectively gauge its practical applications, this approach is tested on an empirical case study of an advanced research team developing electric racing vehicles for academic purposes when it decides to expand into autonomous vehicle development.