Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

11.1 The Epistemic Transformation of Strategy

Digital environments have fundamentally altered the epistemological conditions under which strategy operates. This book has traced the contours of that transformation through six interconnected arguments. Together, they reveal not merely a change in strategic content, but a shift in the very form of strategic knowledge and action.

The transformation begins with the erosion of structural referents. Traditional strategy theory rests on an assumption of environmental legibility: the premise that competitive contexts can be observed, analyzed, and understood through systematic comparison (Farjoun et al., 2021). This legibility depends on the existence of stable patterns, recognizable configurations, and replicable models that serve as cognitive anchors for strategic reasoning. When firms can identify successful templates, they learn through observation and imitation. Over time, strategic knowledge accumulates as a body of relatively generalizable principles that can be codified, taught, and transferred across contexts.

Template-free environments disrupt this epistemic foundation. Chapter 5 demonstrated that digital platform architectures, algorithmic governance, and ecosystem dynamics generate contexts in which stable referents become scarce or absent entirely. Firms cannot reliably identify what to imitate because the conditions that made a strategy successful in one instance may not persist or may not be observable in the first place. Therefore, the loss of templates is not simply an increase in environmental turbulence or competitive intensity. It represents a qualitative shift in the nature of strategic knowledge itself. Knowledge becomes radically situated – embedded in specific configurations of technology, relationships, and temporal conditions that resist abstraction into transferable principles.

This epistemic displacement necessitates a different mode of strategic action. Chapter 6 showed that when foresight becomes unreliable and templates are unavailable, experimentation shifts from an optional tool to a structural necessity. Firms must act before they fully understand, generating knowledge through engagement rather than analysis. Yet experimentation alone does not explain how order emerges from variation. Chapter 7 revealed that temporary experimental solutions stabilize through recursive mechanisms – repetition, reinforcement, and gradual sedimentation – without requiring deliberate evaluation or conscious design. What begins as provisional becomes structural not because it was optimal, but because it was workable and became entrenched.

The organizational forms that result from this process depart sharply from classical ideals of coherence and integration. Chapter 8 demonstrated that digital organizations function as patchwork systems marked by partial integration, asymmetric coupling, and heterogeneous elements that coexist without full harmonization. This is not transitional disorder awaiting resolution. It is a fundamental organizational condition in environments where complete integration is neither achievable nor necessarily desirable. Chapter 9 extended this logic to the domain of learning, showing that firms increasingly operate under conditions of feedback without control. Algorithmic mediation renders causal relationships opaque, forcing firms to adapt through inferential calibration rather than transparent cause-and-effect understanding.

Chapter 10 synthesized these mechanisms into an integrated strategic orientation. It showed that effectiveness in template-free environments depends not on achieving optimal alignment, but on sustaining viability through responsiveness, adaptability, and orchestration under constraint. Strategic agency does not disappear in such contexts, but it becomes situated, iterative, and relational – a matter of navigating bounded possibility spaces rather than exercising unconstrained choice.

The coherence of this theoretical system lies in showing that strategy in template-free environments operates through a mechanism chain in which each element both enables and constrains the others. Experimentation generates variation, but stabilization determines which variations persist. Stabilization creates structure, but partial integration determines how heterogeneous elements coexist. Partial integration shapes organizational form, but mediated feedback determines what signals guide further adaptation. These mechanisms do not operate in sequence. They interact recursively, producing emergent patterns of strategic order that cannot be reduced to deliberate design or planned implementation.

What emerges from this analysis is a fundamental reconceptualization of strategy. Strategy is no longer primarily about selecting and applying predefined models. It becomes an ongoing process of construction under constraint, a continuous effort to build and maintain viable organizational orders in contexts that resist stable patterning. This shift moves strategy theory from a prescriptive to an interpretive role. Theory cannot function as a repository of best practices when practices themselves cannot be reliably transferred. Instead, theory must provide conceptual tools for navigating uncertainty, supporting sensemaking rather than prescribing action.

Recent dialectical approaches to strategy reinforce this reorientation. Farjoun et al. (2021) argue for moving beyond fit-based models toward frameworks that embrace contradiction and tension. In unstable environments, strategic advantage may emerge from managing tensions rather than eliminating them, from sustaining multiple logics rather than enforcing singular coherence. Strategy becomes less about achieving a stable configuration and more about orchestrating productive tension across incompatible demands.

The template-free perspective developed in this book extends and deepens this dialectical turn. It shows that the absence of templates is not merely a contextual feature requiring tactical adjustment. It is a structural condition that transforms the epistemological foundations of strategy, the mechanisms through which strategy emerges, the organizational forms that strategy produces, and the modes of learning through which strategy evolves. Understanding strategy in such environments requires more than the extension of existing frameworks; it requires a more fundamental rethinking of what strategy is and how it operates.

Tartalomjegyzék

Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2026

ISBN: 978 963 664 204 4

Gazdaság

What happens when understanding comes only after action has already begun?

Traditional strategy rests on the assumption that organizations can understand their environment before deciding how to act. Yet the conditions that once allowed organizations to rely on benchmarking, best practices, and proven strategic templates can no longer be taken for granted. Today, organizations increasingly face situations for which no clear roadmap exists. Established assumptions become less reliable, familiar reference points lose their clarity, and strategic decisions must be made before their consequences can be fully understood.

Strategy Without Templates explores how organizations learn, adapt, and navigate environments in which uncertainty is pervasive and established templates are absent or no longer sufficient. Instead of treating strategy as a process of prediction and planning, the book explores how strategic paths take shape through action, experimentation, adjustment, and learning.

A central insight in the book is that temporary solutions are often necessary. What begins as a practical response to an immediate challenge may gradually shape future possibilities in unexpected ways. Some solutions create new opportunities and sources of advantage. Others become constraints that are difficult to overcome.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/hortovanyi-strategy-without-templates//

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