Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

3.4 Distributed Experimentation

Experimentation is not centralized; it unfolds across a distributed ecology of action. In template-free environments, experimentation does not reside in a single strategic unit. It emerges across multiple organizational and interorganizational sites. Product teams, marketing units, platform interfaces, partners, and users all contribute to variation.

“Distributed” does not imply the absence of structure. It implies that variation is generated across multiple nodes that are only partially coordinated in advance. Strategic control, therefore, shifts from centralized design to orchestration of distributed learning.

Platforms intensify this dynamic. They enable large-scale experimentation through modular architectures and APIs while simultaneously structuring which experiments gain visibility and traction (Nambisan et al., 2017). Therefore, experimentation is both enabled and constrained by the broader ecology.

This distributed quality matters because strategic action is no longer determined solely by managerial intention inside the firm. Variation is generated relationally, through interactions among teams, users, complementors, infrastructures, and governance systems. What appears as firm-level adaptation is often the outcome of distributed probes unfolding across multiple sites of interaction. Therefore, strategy is not simply implemented across an external environment; it is co-produced through distributed intervention in that environment.

The M-Pesa case illustrates this mechanism. Safaricom did not implement a predefined model but developed it through iterative adjustments involving users, agents, and regulators (Wormald et al., 2023). Crucially, experimentation was relational: it involved reconfiguring interactions, not merely testing product features.

This extends organizational learning theory. Learning is not confined within the firm; it is distributed across interfaces, partners, and infrastructures. Therefore, strategy is not constructed internally and then executed externally. It is co-constructed through interaction.

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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