In the Portland International (PDX) airport there are two wings: a domestic and international wing. They have separate security checkpoints on opposite ends of the airport. With the timing of flights, they get busy at different intervals and one or the other will have a long line of people stretching away from it.
I rarely have to wait in one of those lines. Why? Well, most travelers don’t know that there is a corridor on the far side of security that connects the two wings. I just go through the less busy side and walk to the other.
If you don’t know about the corridor, then it doesn’t exist for you as an option. Your experience will always entail long security lines.
As it relates to business, we tend to focus our attention in a few domains. This limits our options to only what is readily apparent there. We miss out on the corridor between the wings.
Last week, I was looking at SEO strategies for our primary market. It’s highly competitive and there is no “low hanging fruit” or even “medium hanging” fruit. While investigating, I became curious about adjacent markets and was surprised to see much lower levels of competition.
A new option emerged: rather than slug it out in a market where supply pressure made it harder to market and devalued our work, we might grow in easy-to-access markets where there is less competition.
Years ago, I found out about the corridor by exploring the airport. Exploration is how you develop a broader set of options. But if you don’t take the time to explore, your business’s growth becomes limited to the scope of your awareness.
Featured image is by Claude Allin Shepperson from “The Country of the Blind” by H. G. Wells (The Strand Magazine, April 1904) used under public domain. The story is an exploration of the adage, “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.”