The results of the third edition of our Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) Survey, now with more than 150 participants from 14 different European countries, paint a clear picture of the role of the chief strategist. To add value at the firm level, today's CSO must above all be a master of paradoxes. In times of uncertainty, it is no longer a question of "either/or" but of "both/and": both growth and efficiency, speed and rigor, openness and leadership, short-term success and long-term prospects.
We examine the tensions that make it difficult for a research-oriented university to achieve commercial outcomes. Building on the organisational ambidexterity literature, we specify the nature of the tensions (between academic and commercially-oriented activities) at both institutional and individual levels of analysis, and how these can be resolved. We test our hypotheses using a novel dataset of 207 Research Council-funded projects, linking objective data on project outcomes with the perceptions of principal investigators. Results show that the tension between academic and commercial demands is more salient at the level of the individual researcher than at the level of institutions.
