Brain for Business Series 3, Episode 9: How should firms balance exploration and exploitation? with Dr Axel Zeijen, ETH Zurich
Balancing exploration and exploitation is a fundamental strategic challenge for organizations operating in dynamic environments. Managers must decide how often and when to search for new technologies and products, weighing the costs of exploration against the risk of missing trends that could render their business models obsolete
To dig deep into this topic I am delighted to be speaking today to Professor Axel Zeijen.
About our guest…
Axel Zeijen is a Lecturer at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
With a background in industrial engineering and innovation sciences, Axel is broadly interested in technological change and its organizational implications. In particular, he attempts to understand where and how technological forces and firm strategy interact, and how this process plays out. His research projects cover industries where new
technologies change the capabilities of firms, create new opportunities for change, and affect how competition plays out.
The articles discussed in the podcast area as follows (both open access):
- Zeijen, A., Romagnoli, M., & Marengo, L. (2025). Signposts for problemistic search: Reference points and adaptation in rugged landscapes. Strategy Science. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/full/10.1287/stsc.2023.0072
- Denrell, J., Zeijen, A., Romagnoli, M., & Marengo, L. (2025). Absolute, average‐based, and rank‐based aspirations. Strategic Management Journal. https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smj.3715
Websites for Axel and each of his co-authors are as follows:
- Axel Zeijen - https://timgroup.ethz.ch/people/senior-researchers/dr-axel-zeijen.html
- Jerker Denrell - https://www.wbs.ac.uk/about/person/jerker-denrell/
- Manuel Romagnoli - https://www.wiwi.uni-jena.de/en/11462/dr-manuel-romagnoli
- Luigi Marengo - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OKWSBtQAAAAJ&hl=en
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