A window of opportunity, also called a margin of opportunity or critical window, is a period of time during which some action can be taken that will achieve a desired outcome. Once this period is over, or the "window is closed", the specified outcome is no longer possible.

Examples

Windows of opportunity include:

Biology and medicine

*The

critical period In developmental psychology and developmental biology, a critical period is a maturational stage in the lifespan of an organism during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli. If, for some reason, the org ...

in neurological

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development (music), the process by which thematic material is reshaped * Photographic development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting * Development hell, when a proje ...

, during which

neuroplasticity Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity or just plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through neurogenesis, growth and reorganization. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to reorganize and rewir ...

is greatest and key functions, such as imprinting and

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

, are acquired which may be impossible to acquire at a later stage *The golden hour or golden time, used in

emergency medicine Emergency medicine is the medical specialty concerned with the care of illnesses or injuries requiring immediate medical attention. Emergency physicians (or "ER doctors") specialize in providing care for unscheduled and undifferentiated pa ...

to describe the period following traumatic injury in which life-saving treatment is most likely to be successful

Economics

* Market opportunities, in which one may be positioned to take advantage of a gap in a particular

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market *Marketing, the act of sat ...

, the timing of which may depend on the activities of customers, competitors, and other market context factors *

Limited time offer Limited may refer to: Arts and media *'' Limited Inc'', a 1988 book by Jacques Derrida *Limited series (comics), a comic book series with predetermined length Businesses * Limited Brands, an American company - owners of Victoria's Secret, Bath & ...

, a critical window for consumers that is artificially imposed (or even falsely implied) as a

marketing Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...

tactic to encourage action

Other examples

Planting Sowing is the process of planting seeds. An area that has had seeds planted in it will be described as a sowed or sown area. Plants which are usually sown Among the major field crops, oats, wheat, and rye are sown, grasses and legumes are ...

and

harvest Harvesting is the process of collecting plants, animals, or fish (as well as fungi) as food, especially the process of gathering mature crops, and "the harvest" also refers to the collected crops. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulses fo ...

ing seasons, in agriculture, which are generally timed to maximize crop yields *Space launch and maneuver windows, which are determined by orbital dynamics and mission goals and constrained by

fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work (physics), work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chem ...

delta-v Delta-''v'' (also known as "change in velocity"), symbolized as and pronounced , as used in spacecraft flight dynamics, is a measure of the impulse per unit of spacecraft mass that is needed to perform a maneuver such as launching from or l ...

budgets *The theorized tipping point in climatology, after which the Earth's climate is predicted to shift to a new stable equilibrium *Various transient astronomical events, which present limited (and often unpredictable) windows for observation

Characteristics

Timing

The timing and length of a critical window may be well known and predictable (as in planetary transits) or more poorly understood (as in medical emergencies or

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

). In some cases, there may be multiple windows during which a goal can be achieved, as in the case of space launch windows. In situations with very brief or unpredictable windows of opportunity,

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...

may be employed to take advantage of these windows, as in

algorithmic trading Algorithmic trading is a method of executing orders using automated pre-programmed trading instructions accounting for variables such as time, price, and volume. This type of trading attempts to leverage the speed and computational resources of ...

and

time-domain astronomy Time-domain astronomy is the study of how astronomical objects change with time. Said to have begun with Galileo's '' Letters on Sunspots'', the field has now naturally expanded to encompass variable objects beyond the Solar System. Temporal varia ...

. Real-time computing systems can guarantee responses on the order of milliseconds or less.

Costs

In some time-critical situations, failure to act may entail an increasing cost over time, or a decreasing probability over time of achieving the desired outcome. In

real-time computing Real-time computing (RTC) is the computer science term for Computer hardware, hardware and software systems subject to a "real-time constraint", for example from Event (synchronization primitive), event to Event (computing), system response. Rea ...

systems, this may be represented by

time-utility function A Time/Utility Function (''TUF''), née ''Time/Value Function'', specifies the application-specific ''utility'' that an ''action'' (e.g., computational task, mechanical movement) yields depending on its completion time. TUFs and their utility interp ...

References

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Collins English Dictionary The ''Collins English Dictionary'' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. It was first published in 1979. Corpus The dictionary uses language research based on the Collins Corpus, which is ...

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Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...

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