What is it about?
A new teaching approach helps business students balance creative and practical thinking. By working directly with real tensions, students build confidence, generate more innovative solutions, and develop the ambidextrous skills needed to navigate complex, fast changing environments.
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Why is it important?
As organizations face increasing complexity and rapid change, the ability to think both creatively and critically to generate innovative and viable solutions has become a critical skill gap. This study offers one of the first evidence-based methods for understanding and teaching that capability – ambidexterity – rather than simply describing it. By identifying the essential elements of a ‘paradox pedagogy’ teaching model and revealing how ambidextrous mindsets and behaviors co-evolve, the research provides a timely, practical roadmap for developing more innovative, adaptable problem-solvers at scale.
Perspectives
I was driven to do this research because organizations are facing unprecedented levels of uncertainty, and yet we still train people in linear, either–or ways of thinking. I wanted to create a learning experience that develops the mental agility to solve problems more innovatively, so people can come up with better solutions faster. What feels most important about this study is that it offers practical, evidence based guidance for building the ambidexterity required to generate both innovative and viable solutions. This is something leaders consistently say they need, but we haven’t yet understood know how to develop it. My hope is that this work helps educators and organizations cultivate more adaptive, innovative problem solvers.
Gaia Grant
University of Sydney
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Cultivating Ambidexterity Through a Paradox Pedagogy: A Developmental Model for Innovative Problem-Solving, Organizational Behavior Teaching Review, June 2026, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/10525629261439105.
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