Three Horizons Framework

Biological Parallel

Organisms allocate energy across three time horizons: Horizon 1 (maintain current metabolism—daily survival), Horizon 2 (develop new capabilities—growth, reproduction), Horizon 3 (experiment with adaptive mutations—long-term evolution). Trees simultaneously photosynthesize (H1), grow new branches (H2), and produce seeds with genetic variation (H3). The failure mode: starving H2 and H3 to maximize H1 produces short-term survival but long-term extinction. Portfolio balance across horizons is fundamental to evolutionary fitness.