You might have heard of the ‘explore-exploit’ continuum.

Cited and applied by thinkers in all types of domains for decades, it’s the idea of balancing the messiness of finding new potential opportunities and the value-capture of concentrating on proven opportunities.

That's my paraphrase anyway.

The idea originated in 1991 by late Stanford Professor James March, defining the two activities as:

“Exploration includes things captured by terms such as search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, innovation.”

Exploitation includes such things as refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection, implementation, execution.”

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Just this past weekend, I saw the concept invoked in two different contexts:

• Kellogg’s research about artists finding their hot streaks
• Sketchplanations’s take on Roger Martin’s ‘knowledge funnel’ from mystery to heuristic to algorithm.

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And when you search ‘explore vs. exploit’ in Google Images, you get a bunch of iterations of Strategyzer’s 'scribble drawing' — which I think does a great job of instantly visualizing the concept.

Further, it invites you naturally to apply it to your own context — a hallmark of a good Intellectual Headshot.

As a consultant, you can likely instantly trace this line to your own journey of finding a niche, an ideal client, or a flagship service.

Are you in the search phase? Or in the grow / optimize phase?

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And if you dig further still, Strategyzer expands their take into a Business Model Portfolio time series, layering on Clay Christensen’s business model life-cycle over the Exploit phase.

Admittedly this last step is getting a bit dense -- two stacked 2x2s and a 10-step process is a little much.

But even so, the visual serves to provide a landscape for a rich conversation with their potential client, such as:

• How are you investing in exploration vs. exploitation?
• How are your teams organized between the two?
• Of your explore activities, how fruitful have they been? What’s been promising?
• Of your mature (exploit) opportunities, are you investing in keeping them profitable?
• What’s your plan for renovation or sunsetting?

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Try keeping a conversation like that on the rails without a grounding visual.

It would remain highly abstract.

Abstract leads to confusion.

And confusion precludes progress.

For you, for your client, and for your potential work together.

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🖼️ Do you have a visual ‘conversation piece’ in your asset library?

If not, what might yours look like?

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💡

-Wes

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P.S. 🦃 Just one November Headshot sprint left!

Hit reply or book a free consult and we can chat about getting these sorts of unique visuals in your hands and working hard for your business.