Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

11.5.4 SMEs and Resource-Constrained Adaptation

Small and medium-sized enterprises represent a particularly important context for advancing the template-free framework. SMEs face many of the same template-free conditions as larger firms – platform dependence, algorithmic mediation, ecosystem dynamics – but they do so with fewer resources, less slack, and more severe constraints. This makes them a revealing domain for understanding how the mechanisms operate under conditions of acute resource scarcity.

Research is needed on how SMEs orchestrate experimentation when they lack the resources for extensive trial-and-error. How do they balance the need for variation with the risk that failed experiments pose to their survival? What forms of low-cost experimentation prove most effective? How do SMEs leverage external resources – platform tools, ecosystem partners, open-source technologies – to expand their experimental capacity?

Stabilization dynamics may also differ for SMEs. With less organizational inertia and fewer legacy systems, SMEs may stabilize new practices more quickly than larger firms. But they may also be more vulnerable to destabilization when platform conditions change. How do SMEs manage the tension between the need for operational stability and the need for continued flexibility? What early warning systems help them detect when stabilized practices are becoming misaligned with changing conditions?

Partial integration may be less of a choice for SMEs than a necessity. They often lack the resources to achieve full integration even if they desired it. How do SMEs manage patchwork organizational forms with limited managerial capacity? What minimal levels of coherence are necessary for viability? How do they leverage external integration mechanisms – platform infrastructures, ecosystem standards, and third-party tools – to compensate for internal integration limitations?

The strategic orientation framework developed in Chapter 10 was designed with SMEs in mind, but empirical research is needed to test and refine it. Do SMEs that adopt viability-focused orientations perform better than those pursuing optimization? How do SMEs develop capabilities for calibration under opacity? What role do networks, communities, and peer learning play in helping SMEs navigate template-free conditions?

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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