Unlock Hidden Growth From Assets You Own or Can Acquire
Leverage the Emergent Power of Exaptation
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Exaptation is an evolutionary principle describing the shift in the function of a resource. It’s how things designed and built for a given use find new uses through emergent processes. Beyond original design, capabilities emerge from latent potential within resources. See Exaptation Science for more
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EGS is a pioneering strategic management theory that causally explains how exaptations occur, describes how to intentionally search for future functions, and prescribes how organizations can deploy existing practices to generate value. Read the blog post
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ExAI is the applied method to search for valuable new functions from available assets & resources. It encodes scientific knowledge, tech innovation techniques and business processes to surface differentiated growth opportunities in hours and days, not months. See ExAI Services
Exaptations in Business
Google’s Founding Innovation
Google Search is Exaptation of the Weblinks
Resource: Web links on each webpage
Designed Function: Web navigation.
Emergent Function: Web search, which changed Internet’s evolutionary trajectory.
Watch Sergey Brin & Larry Page (up to 2 mins) hint at this emergence resulting from open-ended research experiments to understand Web’s network structure.
Asymmetric Outcomes
Emergent processes create expansionary, super-exponential opportunity space
Market-Changing Exaptations + Value Generation by Companies
1. Uber Eats
2) Pfizer's Viagra
3) Raytheon Microwave
4) Apple iPhone & AppStore
5) 3M Post-Its Note
6) Replit AI
7) Nvidia CUDA + AI Chips
8) Amazon MTurk
9) CoreWeave CDF
10) SpaceX Reusable Rockets
1. Uber Eats 2) Pfizer's Viagra 3) Raytheon Microwave 4) Apple iPhone & AppStore 5) 3M Post-Its Note 6) Replit AI 7) Nvidia CUDA + AI Chips 8) Amazon MTurk 9) CoreWeave CDF 10) SpaceX Reusable Rockets
Exaptations in Science, Society, Non-Profit Orgs
1. Subsea Fiber Optic Cables
2) Seamount Catalogs
3) Stanford $5 Challenge
4) Airbnb Donations
5) The HighLine NYC
6) Google Maps - India
7) Architectural Spandrels
8) IKEA Hacks
1. Subsea Fiber Optic Cables 2) Seamount Catalogs 3) Stanford $5 Challenge 4) Airbnb Donations 5) The HighLine NYC 6) Google Maps - India 7) Architectural Spandrels 8) IKEA Hacks
Value Proposition
If a system is evolving, exaptations are waiting to be discovered or induced!
This Changes Everything
Humans with bold, expansionary mindsets will lead in creating tangible and intangible value
Tangible Financial Value
1) Optionality = Growth beyond your existing portfolio
2) ROI = Higher margins by doing more with more
3) ROA = Higher asset valuations from increased utilizations
4) Identify undervalued M&A, Joint Ventures, Partnerships and Spinoffs
5) Create markets (Blue Ocean TAM) & enter adjacent / non-core markets (Disruption)
Intangible Future Value
1) Improve existing products & services + embed exaptation into product design
2) Strengthen competitive advantage (4 of 7 Powers)
3) Enhance future roadmap, incl inevitable pivots during the AI-era
4) Amplify innovation routines (exaptive ideation, experimentation culture)
5) Explore novel technological research with existing resources
Exaptation AI: Growth is a Search Problem
ExAI is designed to search and evaluate high-value opportunities your competitors don’t know about
1. Inventory
Task: Conduct Latent Asset Review to evaluate potential of available & acquirable assets for Alpha growth.
ExAI: Ingest chosen asset types, determines its properties and produces high-value candidates for testing.
Example: Your data exhaust may be hiding a customer-facing signal in an adjacent market.
2. Experiment
Task: For each evaluated idea, select custom business experiments to manifest a new function of the asset.
ExAI: Suggest research-backed, proprietary pilots that any org can conduct using existing innovation practices.
Example: Data exhaust should be tested for productizable anomalies or edge cases.
3. Value
Task: For each exaptation, develop a business model + executive briefing to advance high-ROI ideas internally.
ExAI: Trained to craft & stress-test the initial business model that can be refined by your org’s internal teams.
Example: Data exhaust’s new function may be valuable for more customers in new markets.
EGS In Strategic Management
This practice is complementary to existing growth management frameworks you already know!
Exaptation AI · Where EGS sits
Every growth framework asks a different question
These are not substitutes — each is strong at something the others are not. Three of them ask you to name the destination before you set out. The fourth is a way of finding out what the destination is.
| Framework | The question it asks | Destination named up front? | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Competitive StrategyPorter, 1980 | How should we position ourselves to outperform rivals in this industry? | Yes | Diagnosing industry attractiveness and choosing where to play |
| Disruptive InnovationChristensen, 1997 | Where can a simpler or cheaper offer gain a foothold and then improve? | Yes | Predicting incumbent failure and spotting asymmetric entry |
| Blue Ocean StrategyKim & Mauborgne, 2005 | What uncontested market space and new demand can we create? | Yes | Escaping head-to-head competition |
| Exaptation Growth StrategyShah, 2024 | What else can this asset do? | Discovered | Growth you do not yet know you have |
Fortune favors the prepared mind!
“Fortuna Eruditis Favet”
Nvidia’s CUDA Decision
Zero-Billion-Dollar Markets
“Go and do something that has never been done before, is insanely hard to do, that if you achieve it will make a real contribution.”
- Jensen Huang
When you use ExAI, the goal is not to generate exaptations. The goal is to generate value!
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