Explorative action in search for a new logic of business activity

In this study, the explorative actions are analyzed that a Finnish ICT firm took in its marketing in search for a new business logic that would help it to overcome a threat of crisis. The explorative actions are here seen both as a means of learning to break out from the historically formed prevailing work routines and of inventing new opportunities. In the ICT firm, explorative actions were taken after its predominant business logic that was based on technological product development had come to the end of its life cycle. The managers anticipated that a new ground for business logic could be found in business services. An analytical model has been created for depicting explorative actions carried out in the o customer interface. The analysis of the explorative actions the firm’s management took during a period of three years shows how the new modes of interacting with the customers and how the explorative actions engendered contributed to a strategic reorientation of the firm. The explorative actions could not be seen as purely exploitative or purely explorative but seemed to comprise these aspects as a dialectical unity of opposites. The findings also highlight the role of both an experience of problem and an intellectual understanding of an aggravating contradiction in the activity as stimuli to take explorative actions.