Firm’s capacity to innovate based on exploitation of its knowledge, while it explores new opportunities beyond its current knowledge, is captured by the concept of organizational ambidexterity. This concept has been seen as an alternative for firms to obtain a higher sustainable performance than industry average. However, this task is not easy to accomplish, and to collaborate with other organizations is a path to achieve it. The study of inter-organizational relationships to explain organizational ambidexterity is a novel field in the literature. Thus, this research presents a review about organizational ambidexterity with special emphasis on external sources, in contrast to internal sources that had been studied extensively. Journals with higher impact factor that address innovation issues from a management and marketing perspective have been reviewed. The authors conclude that inter-organizational relationships could contribute with organizational ambidexterity, and also have an effect over firm performance in the presence of absorptive capacity, relational governance and alliance capability. Results point out key factors for the success of inter-firms collaboration agreements for innovation.