Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

2.7 Template-Free Environments and Their Strategic Implications

Once the environment is understood as a structured ecology shaped by architectural reconfiguration, algorithmic mediation, ecosystem interdependence, and continuous disequilibrium, the notion of template-free environments becomes conceptually clearer. A template-free environment is not simply an uncertain or innovative setting. It is an environment in which firms cannot rely on stable and transferable strategic models because the structures of coordination, visibility, access, and value creation are continuously being redefined.

This is a more precise claim than saying that “best practice” is difficult to identify. The issue is not only informational difficulty. It is that the conditions required for transferable templates are systematically weakened. Shared rules are unstable, comparable contexts are harder to establish, category boundaries blur, and the relationship between action and outcome becomes more contingent on local configuration.

The shift from stable-context environments to structured ecologies can be clarified by comparing their underlying assumptions and implications for strategic action. The key differences are summarized across several dimensions in Table 1.

Table 1 From stable-context environment to structured ecology

Dimension	Stable-context view	Structured ecology view
Ontology of environment	External context	Relational and evolving system
Visibility	Largely analyzable	Partially opaque and mediated
Relation to firm action	Mostly separate	Recursively intertwined
Temporal logic	Temporary stabilization expected	Continuous reconfiguration possible
Strategic implication	Planning and positioning	Experimentation and configuration

Source: Author’s own elaboration.

Table 1 shows how changes in visibility, interaction, and temporal dynamics reshape the conditions of strategic action. As environments become more mediated, interdependent, and continuously reconfigured, the assumptions that supported planning, positioning, and cumulative learning progressively weaken.

Under such conditions, strategic action shifts from planning and positioning toward situated experimentation and adaptive configuration. This does not mean that analysis, commitment, or long-term direction disappear. It means that they must be reformulated. Planning becomes less about projecting stable futures and more about preserving coordinated flexibility. Positioning becomes less about occupying a defensible place in a fixed landscape and more about maintaining orientation within a moving relational system. Learning becomes less about accumulating stable routines and more about interpreting temporary feedback under partial visibility.

For that reason, the strategic implication of this chapter is not merely that firms should become more agile. The deeper implication is that the environment no longer reliably supports the assumptions that made template-based strategy possible. Therefore, strategy must be rethought as configuration under structural uncertainty rather than as fit within a stable context.

The chapter’s theoretical contribution is threefold. First, it shows why traditional environmental theories become insufficient when externality, transparency, separability, and equilibrium weaken as environmental assumptions. Second, it reconceptualizes the environment as a structured ecology rather than an external context. Third, it introduces template-free environments as a condition in which strategic models are difficult to transfer because the relevant structures of action are continuously redefined through interaction, governance, and mediation.

This argument provides the bridge to the next chapter. If the environment can no longer be treated as stable, transparent, separable, or equilibrium-seeking, then the logic of strategic action must also change. The question is no longer how firms plan within a given environment, but how they act when the environment itself cannot be fully specified in advance. That is the point at which experimentation enters not as a managerial preference but as a structural necessity.

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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