Exploration VS Exploitation

“I am still learning” [Michelangelo at the age of 87]
Today I would like so much to write about exploration and exploitation. Actually, I do not remember since how many years I am planning a public speech about this interesting topic. Maybe one day…

Juicy topic as I said, because these two strange long words could be associated with all sort of different disciplines and subjects in the world; we can easily speak about exploration and exploitation from lots of different points of view: lifestyle, Computer Science, Social Sciences, the job market, …

But hey, what does they mean?

Exploration means a set of all the activities (learning, practicing) related to the acquisition of a broader knowledge of the environment around us.

Even if we do not pay enough attention, we apply this simply concept in our day-to-day life situations and circumstances. For example, a child when begins to take the first steps he goes up and down the room touching and watching everything but, the most important action he does frequently, is to put objects in the mouth trying to taste them. This behavior lead to an huge acquistion of information.

This is a good example about exploration. A child using the five senses, a young worker who strive to learn as much as possible about his new job, a little girl during her first days of school, an entrepreneur ready to start his new business, these are all examples of situations when people uses exploration. Lots and lots of experiments.

Exploitation means putting all the effort in order to master the skills in a precise environment.

Compared to exploration, exploitation could be associated to the opposite behavior. A baby growing up suddenly becomes a man, the same is for an Intern who becomes a Manager. When we grow up or, more precisely, when we have gained a significant amount of experience in our environment we stop to explore rather we tend to exploit. What does it mean? It means the man stop to learn from the environment, he stops to put objects in his mouth (I hope so), the Intern now is a Manager or a boss, the company finished the startup period and now it is a famous company, so in all of these case people starts to do always the same job to master it and sometimes they forget to explore.

In poor words, it means we significantly reduce the amount of time and energies dedicated to learn and store data in our brains because we stay focused in doing well our job as we learnt it years ago.

It is very important for a person or a company to try to balance exploration and exploitation. Otherwise this could lead in the long time to huge problems. For example, if a subject exceeds with exploration it risks to put too much effort in exploring always new routes without keeping neither one because it is focused in chasing after the change. From the other side, a lack of exploration and too much exploitation could bring a subject to be the best in town but just inside his small environment. So exploration and exploitation should live together.

Just for saying… Olivetti, the Italian manufacturer of typewriters, computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines, back in the 90’s used electronic calculators (i.e computers) to double check its typewriters.

That’s all folks!

FF