“Instead of looking at two strategies [such as Exploit or Explore], Laland and associates included a third: observe. That is, you can watch other people deal with a situation, and then copy them.
Arnold Kling, “Exploit, Explore, Copy.” arnoldkling.substack.com. May 30, 2023
Exploit seems like optimize. You create efficiencies based on scale, refining processes or whatever.
Explore is when you are looking for novel approaches. This is searching the answer space for a new direction.
Copy is the easiest, where you just copy what someone else is doing. Often a great place to start or expand. But, hard to get any kind of competitive advantage from merely copying the work of others. There is also cost. You’ll have to strive to understand what they have done and why they did it. You will also not have a full understanding of the constraints decisions were made under. Still, it can be a very productive way to approach the world, particularly when multiple sources are used and things are combined into novel ways. So, possible for this to move into a hybrid solution.
cafebedouin.org 