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& March (1963), the discussion of the organizational implications goes
back to the 1930s (Burns & Stalker). The challenge is as follows:

● Exploring new offerings requires financial and cultural

commitments by an organization to learn and innovate including
a willingness to invest at risk.

● Exploiting the profit-earning capability of an offering requires

stability of operating systems and a culture of optimization of
processes.

Achieving both these at the same time is tricky in the same
organization and is the underlying problem of long and short-term

thinking. Additionally, the two mindsets attract different personalities
with different behavior patterns; personalities that don't necessarily
mix well.

In the practice literature, this problem is tagged as creating the

Ambidextrous Organization able to both explore and exploit at the
same time. As the need to adapt becomes more intense, the profit
implications of organizing to both explore and exploit become more

profound.
Competence Erosion

As the rate of required adaptation accelerates, driven in part by

technological advances, the lifespan of an individual's and
organization's competence will likely be eroded. At the task level of a
system, this implies the need for continuous retraining and self-driven
technical education. This is what is behind the shift to lifetime

technical retraining and the dramatic growth in corporate and
individual e-learning.

Or Not!

At the system-leadership level of a system, curiously enough, re-
education can be expected to move more slowly with a focus on
understanding context and the adaptation of the system. At that level,

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