Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

3.7 Theoretical Contribution: Strategy as Action Before Knowledge

This chapter contributes to strategy theory by redefining the relationship between uncertainty, action, and strategic formation. Its core argument is not simply that experimentation matters more in digital environments. That claim, while true, would remain too weak. The stronger claim is that under structural uncertainty, experimentation becomes the primary mechanism through which strategy is made possible in the first place.

The first contribution is conceptual. The chapter differentiates structural uncertainty from informational uncertainty as a difference in kind rather than degree. This matters because much of strategy theory continues to treat uncertainty as a problem of incomplete information, solvable through better analysis, richer data, or more refined forecasting. The argument developed here shows that such approaches remain coherent only when the causal structure of the environment is sufficiently stable. When the structure itself is in motion, uncertainty cannot be reduced to ignorance about known variables. It becomes a condition in which the object of knowledge is itself unstable. This distinction clarifies why classical strategy frameworks lose explanatory sufficiency in digitally mediated and recursively evolving environments.

The second contribution is processual. The chapter reframes experimentation not as a temporary search technique, an innovation tool, or an entrepreneurial habit, but as a persistent mode of strategic action. In conventional accounts, experimentation is often positioned between ignorance and eventual stabilization: firms test alternatives until enough is known to commit decisively. Here, by contrast, experimentation is theorized as enduring because the environment does not settle long enough for analysis or learning to displace it. Therefore, experimentation is not preparatory to strategy. It is the operating logic of strategy under conditions where foresight cannot reliably precede action.

The third contribution is organizational. The chapter shows that experimentation is distributed across a structured ecology rather than contained within a single firm-level decision center. Variation is generated across teams, interfaces, users, complementors, and infrastructures; selection is mediated through platform architectures and algorithmic systems; stabilization emerges through routinization, sedimentation, and temporary coordination. This shifts the locus of strategy from managerial design to relational orchestration. Strategy is not simply formulated inside the firm and then executed outward. It is co-produced through recursive engagement with an ecology that is only partially visible and continuously changing.

The fourth contribution is temporal. The chapter inverts the classical sequence of strategic reasoning. In much of traditional strategy theory, knowledge precedes choice and choice precedes action. In the framework developed here, action increasingly precedes understanding. Firms act in order to discover the current configuration of the system, and strategic knowledge emerges retrospectively through interpreted feedback. This does not eliminate intentionality, but it repositions it. Intentionality becomes provisional, open to correction, and adjustable rather than fully specifying action in advance. Strategy, in other words, becomes less a matter of prior design and more a matter of disciplined engagement under non-resolvable uncertainty.

The fifth contribution concerns stability. The chapter does not romanticize experimentation as pure flexibility. On the contrary, it shows that experimentation generates residues – technical, organizational, and relational – that shape future adaptation. These residues accumulate into path-dependent architectures that can enable coordination while simultaneously constraining future possibilities. This introduces a more ambivalent theory of adaptation: firms survive not by remaining fluid, but by repeatedly stabilizing temporary solutions whose very success may narrow later options. Therefore, adaptation is best understood not as movement toward an optimal equilibrium, but as the recursive production and revision of temporarily viable configurations.

Collectively, these contributions define a distinct theory of action under structural uncertainty. If Chapter 2 redefined the environment as a structured ecology, Chapter 3 redefines strategy as recursive experimentation within that ecology. Strategy is no longer adequately understood as the deliberate alignment of firm and environment through superior foresight. It becomes the ongoing construction of viability through iterative, distributed, and path-dependent engagement with a moving system.

Experimentation, then, is not a deviation from strategy, nor merely a substitute for incomplete analysis. It is the mechanism through which strategy becomes possible when the environment no longer functions as a stable object of knowledge.

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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