Business Model Orchestration as an ambidextrous growth strategy for innovative SMES

This paper examines how innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) achieve growth while managing the enduring tension between exploration and exploitation. Drawing on a longitudinal, qualitative case study of a French high-tech SME and its ecosystem, we show that ambidexterity is not primarily resolved through internal organizational design, but through the orchestration of multiple business models and stakeholder relationships across organizational boundaries. The findings reveal how SMEs stabilize core exploitative activities while selectively externalizing exploratory innovation through distinct business models and ecosystem partnerships, enabling “scaling without owning.” We theorize business model orchestration as a higher-order dynamic capability that governs portfolios of business models over time, allocating risk, control, and learning across activities. By reframing ambidexterity as a boundary-spanning and processual phenomenon, the study contributes to research on ambidexterity, business model innovation, and ecosystem-based growth, offering a realistic account of how resource-constrained SMEs sustain growth in complex and uncertain environments.