While competing on its classic brick-based sets, Lego has been building its digital competence in terms of creating video games, movies, AI-driven design for both its creators and consumers, and online play platforms. While it was growing its mail-order DVD business, Netflix was already taking the first steps in developing and implementing streaming technology, and transforming its business model toward digital. And while charging a fraction of the price for operations compared with its local competitors, the healthcare chain Narayana Health has been growing its business as well as achieving higher profit margins than key competitors. Narayana has also developed its own, tailored healthcare platforms and embeds digital technologies to optimize all its processes in terms of patient experience, diagnostics, and background operations. All these companies have one thing in common: they are what we call multidextrous. They are accomplishing ambidexterity, the balancing of competing objectives, through a third integral move of digital competence and transformation.

The challenge: becoming multidextrous

In the age of AI, the path to ambidexterity necessitates that a company builds its digital DNA and successfully achieves digital transformation—the reconfiguration of processes and business models—in a way that leverages the power of data and the insights it can offer. However, digital transformation is hard and estimates of success differ. But studies show that the chances that transformations can meet their stated objectives are one in eight.^[1]Wade, M., & Shan, J. (2020). Covid-19 Has accelerated digital transformation, but may have made it harder not easier. MIS Quarterly Executive, 19(3): 213-220. When the three dimensions of project budget, benefits, and timeline are considered, only one out of 200 projects meet objectives in terms of all three.^[2]Budzier, A., Gottschalck, T., Thuesen, K. B., & Lanng, A. (2025). Intelligent Change: The Science Behind Digital Transformations. John Wiley & Sons. We view this rare capability of successful digital transformation as a third necessary and integral leg of ambidexterity, an organizational skill set we can more properly call “multidexterity.”

Setting digital transformation aside for a moment, ambidexterity alone requires companies to accomplish competing objectives. Can you Innovate how you do business while optimizing operations?^[3]Sia, S. K., Weill, P., & Zhang, N. (2021). Designing a future-ready enterprise: The digital transformation of DBS bank. California management review, 63(3), 35-57. Can you have high quality offerings while achieving low cost internally?^[4]Heracleous, L., & Wirtz, J. (2010). Singapore Airlines’ balancing act. Harvard Business Review, 88(7/8), 145-149. Can you be large but also nimble?^[5]Heracleous, L. (2013). Quantum strategy at apple inc. Organizational Dynamics, 42(2), 92-99. Only a small minority of companies manage to successfully achieve this.^[6]Haanaes, K., Reeves, M., & Wurlod, J. (2018). The 2% Company. BCG Henderson Institute.

One challenge lies in the inherent conflicts within business models. The skills needed to optimize and profit from an existing business are different from those needed to innovate and explore new avenues. Getting operations to run efficiently, like clockwork, is different from the experimentation and messy interactions involved in creating something new. Further, an optimization mindset is different from an out-of-the-box mindset needed to generate new ideas. High quality or novel offerings often exact a cost penalty; larger size usually breeds bureaucracy and slowness; and process innovation can disrupt existing operations, leading to suboptimization of resources.

Time and technology are key factors. Ambidexterity is not a quick fix; it’s a systemic capability that cannot be purchased or achieved by simply tweaking a few processes or hiring particular talent. It requires a digital transformational change program developed over time. This involves a commitment to purpose, distributed leadership, skills development, infrastructure investment, and other initiatives that simultaneously address competing aspects, such as operational excellence and strategic flexibility.^[7]O’Reilly III, C. A., & Tushman, M. L. (2013). Organizational ambidexterity: Past, present, and future. Academy of management Perspectives, 27(4), 324-338.

Paths to multidexterity

Becoming multidextrous requires following a path to ambidexterity while effectively leveraging technology within a digital transformation framework.

Structural ambidexterity, for example, refers to an organization’s ability to separate innovative efforts from core operations while ensuring adequate integration, so that both contribute to the overall strategy and performance.^[8]Heracleous, L., Papachroni, A., Andriopoulos, C., & Gotsi, M. (2017). Structural ambidexterity and competency traps: Insights from Xerox PARC. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 117, … Continue reading Amazon operates its core e-commerce business as it simultaneously drives innovation and growth through Amazon Web Services. AWS was initially developed as an internal solution to Amazon’s growing IT needs but eventually became a dominant player in the cloud computing market. This dual focus allows Amazon to maintain and sharpen its operational excellence in retail while leading in technological innovation and creating an engine of growth for the company.

Contextual ambidexterity involves creating an environment where employees can simultaneously focus on exploring new opportunities and exploiting existing capabilities within the same business.^[9]Papachroni, A., & Heracleous, L. (2020). Ambidexterity as practice: Individual ambidexterity through paradoxical practices. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 56(2), 143-165. DBS Bank provides a compelling example of this.^[10]Sia, S. K., Weill, P., & Zhang, N. (2021). Designing a future-ready enterprise: The digital transformation of DBS bank. California management review, 63(3), 35-57. Recognized as the World’s Best Digital Bank, DBS fosters a culture of experimentation and agility within its teams. By empowering employees to make decisions and adapt quickly, the bank has been able to innovate in digital banking while continuing to optimize its traditional services. DBS became multidextrous via a multiyear journey that included ruthless rationalization of diverse banking platforms into an integrated technology model, consistent agility initiatives and training, and integrating business with technology in terms of joint KPIs for all leaders.^[11]Heracleous, L., & Gledhill, D. (2024). Why digital transformation may fail–And what can be done about it. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 60(1), 215-219.

Temporal ambidexterity refers to the ability of an organization to shift focus sequentially between different business models over time, ensuring that it remains agile and competitive in the long term.^[12]Tushman, M. L., & O’Reilly III, C. A. (1996). Ambidextrous organizations: Managing evolutionary and revolutionary change. California management review, 38(4), 8-29. NASA has shifted between three business models over the decades since its founding in 1958: the traditional hierarchical model, the inter-governmental partnership model, and currently the commercial network model. Each of these models involves a different technology strategy, values and capabilities. These models enable strategic agility over the long term, and the ability to balance successful delivery of more and more ambitious missions with ever-dwindling resources.^[13]Heracleous, L., Wawarta, C., Papachroni, A., & Paroutis, S. (2023). Logical Incrementalism as a Path to Strategic Agility: The Caseof NASA. California Management Review, 65(4), 63-92. The agency developed a digital transformation framework to guide its efforts that includes desired future states, transformation targets, digital levers, technologies to be used such as AI and intelligent automation, and mission outcomes.^[14]Marlowe, J. L., Haymes, C. L., & Murphy, P. L. (2022). NASA’s digital transformation strategic framework & implementation approach. NASA/TM-20220018538, December, 20pp.

How to become multidextrous

Leadership mindset is a starting point. For leaders, the first essential move is to question the status quo or received wisdom. The fact that something has been done a certain way for decades does not mean that it should continue to be done that way. Challenging the status quo is the first step to giving permission to oneself to envision a different future. Dr. Devi Shetty, the founder of Narayana Health, saw the state of the healthcare industry in India in 2000 and believed it could be both better and cheaper. He envisioned democratizing healthcare in a country with immense structural challenges in this sector. Narayana Health has gone on to find ways treat over 100 million patients since its founding.

Leaders should be able to hold competing ideas simultaneously in their mind—a process that can help to reframe persistent problems and lead to groundbreaking solutions. Narayana Health is recognized as one of the leading cardiac healthcare organizations in the world, offering surgeries of high quality at around a quarter of the cost of leading competitors. The imperative of achieving simultaneously high quality as well as low cost led to the development of technology and, in time, AI-powered processes both in diagnostics as well as in patient management, higher specialization for surgeons, job enrichment for medical support staff, flat organization design, and a tailored and precise internal metrics system that pinpoints levels of efficiency and quality in all grew.

Developing the digital DNA of the business is another key ingredient for multidexterity. DBS Bank developed its digital DNA by developing joint KPIs for both business and technology leaders, involving all employees in hackathons and other technology learning opportunities while at the same time investing in technology platforms and technology systems harmonization across the bank.^[15]Heracleous, L., & Gledhill, D. (2024). Why digital transformation may fail–And what can be done about it. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 60(1), 215-219.

New technologies such as AI are raising the stakes by offering unprecedented opportunities for simultaneous optimization as well as innovation. Invest in the necessary technology infrastructure and digital DNA toward the path to multidexterity.