– The aim of this paper is to consider how exploitative and exploratory team processes contribute to adaptive and innovative outcomes. The paper integrates the team learning and team adaptation literature and examines factors that stimulate and support exploitative and exploratory processes in interdisciplinary and homogeneous teams. This has implications for team learning research and facilitation that fosters adaptation and innovation.
– The paper reviews how teams learn to be exploitative and exploratory and the extent to which adaptive and innovative outcomes ensue. The paper suggests the value of teams understanding how different conditions (environment, leadership, member characteristics, and team composition) affect team members' interactions as they learn and apply exploitative and exploratory processes to produce adaptive and/or innovative outcomes.
– Teams learn frames of reference for being exploitative and exploratory influenced by environmental conditions, leadership, particularly leadership that creates psychological safety, and team member characteristics and team. Interdisciplinary team composition and resulting possible subgroup formation pose challenges for exploitative and exploratory teams.
– Future research should study teams over time to observe subgroup formation and integration, and facilitation by leaders, team members, and group dynamics professionals to support exploratory and exploitative frames and the emergence of adaptations and innovations.
– Teams may be more successful in implementing innovations when they have learned how to weave between exploratory and exploitative frames of behavior.
– The paper applies exploitative and exploratory processes to teams to increase their capacity to produce adaptive and innovative outcomes.
