Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

12.6 Conclusion: Strategy Without Templates

Strategy without templates is not a diminished form of strategy. It is strategy adapted to conditions in which the epistemic foundations of traditional approaches – stable reference points, reliable foresight, and interpretable cause–effect relationships – no longer hold. Under such conditions, firms act without fully specified goals, without complete knowledge, and without full control, yet still manage to navigate uncertainty, sustain operations, and, in some cases, achieve durable success.

The framework developed in this book provides a conceptual basis for understanding how such outcomes are possible. It specifies the mechanisms through which strategic order emerges when it cannot be comprehensively designed, and it shows how effectiveness can be achieved even when it cannot be optimized. In doing so, it demonstrates that coherence may remain partial, knowledge may be enacted rather than possessed, and agency may be constrained yet still consequential.

The argument has proceeded in three movements. The first, developed in Chapters 2 through 5, established the structural conditions that make template-based strategy untenable: the reconceptualization of the environment as a structured ecology, the breakdown of foresight as a reliable basis for action, the collapse of template-based strategic logic, and the structural disappearance of the industry standards and shared referents on which templates depended. The second movement, developed in Chapters 6 through 9, traced the positive mechanisms through which strategy takes shape under these conditions: enacted experimentation, the paradoxical stabilization of temporary responses into durable structures, the emergence of patchwork configurations as a persistent organizational form, and the transformation of feedback into a mediated and selectively visible signal. The third movement, developed in Chapters 10 and 11, integrated these mechanisms into a coherent strategic orientation and positioned the resulting framework within the existing literature – specifying what it extends, what it challenges, and what it leaves open for further inquiry.

These arguments together constitute a reconceptualization of strategy. The emphasis shifts from design to construction, from control to calibration, and from coherence to patchwork viability. Strategic action is no longer understood as the implementation of a predefined plan, but as the ongoing construction and stabilization of workable configurations under conditions of uncertainty, opacity, and constraint.

This reconceptualization has implications for both theory and practice. It challenges the assumptions that have long structured strategic analysis and reframes how effectiveness is understood and evaluated. For managers, it implies that effectiveness lies not in achieving optimal alignment, but in sustaining viable trajectories over time. For theory, it implies a shift from prescriptive models toward frameworks that clarify mechanisms, conditions, and limits of applicability.

What makes this reconceptualization more than a restatement of familiar arguments about uncertainty or complexity is its specificity. It does not say that environments have become harder to predict – a claim strategy theory has accommodated many times. It shows that the structural conditions enabling prediction, comparison, and template formation have been undermined at a more fundamental level, and it specifies how this undermining occurs, through which mechanisms strategy remains possible, and what kind of effectiveness can be sustained under such conditions. That combination of diagnostic precision, mechanism-based explanation, and explicit scope conditions is what distinguishes the framework advanced here from both the classical traditions it engages and the broader literature on adaptive or emergent strategy.

The perspective advanced in this book is not intended as a final formulation. It provides a foundation for understanding strategy in environments where templates are absent or unreliable. As economic organization continues to evolve – through digitalization, platformization, and increasing interdependence – the conditions addressed here are likely to become more prevalent. Under such circumstances, understanding strategy without templates becomes not only theoretically necessary, but practically indispensable.

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//

BibTeX EndNote Mendeley Zotero