organizations may engage primarily in exploration, the search for new knowledge (in our terms, seeking movement across the knowledge stages), or exploitation, the maximization of payoff from existing knowledge (refinement within a knowledge stage). 4 Both activities can create enormous value, and both are critical to the success of any business organization. But they are hard to engage in simultaneously; most often, organizations choose to focus on one activity, either exploration or exploitation, to the exclusion of the other and to their own detriment.
