Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

4.2 The Collapse of Replication: Structural Reconfiguration as the New Normal

The failure of strategic templates in digital environments cannot be explained solely by increasing uncertainty or by a generic appeal to complexity. A more precise explanation requires identifying the underlying generative mechanism: the continuous reconfiguration of the structures within which strategies operate. In classical contexts, replication works because the underlying structure remains sufficiently stable. A strategy that proves effective in one firm or period can be reapplied because the rules of interaction, market access, and competitive organization remain broadly comparable. Replication presupposes that form and function travel together.

In digitally mediated environments, this condition no longer holds. In digitally mediated environments, this condition no longer holds. As established in the preceding chapters, platforms, algorithms, and digital infrastructures introduce endogenous structural changes. The environment is not simply evolving over time; it is repeatedly reorganized from within, through interface redesign, changes in access conditions, shifts in algorithmic ranking, data governance modifications, and evolving boundary resources (Alaimo & Kallinikos, 2021; Pentland et al., 2022). These changes alter the conditions under which firms compete, often without any corresponding change in the focal firm’s own strategy.

As a result, strategies are no longer imitable across structurally distinct contexts. Even when a firm attempts to replicate a successful model, it reproduces only the visible elements of that model. These observable elements, such as pricing logic, interface design, customer engagement patterns, or organizational routines, do not provide a reliable basis for strategic action. As established in the preceding chapters, what becomes available in digital environments are observable outcomes in the form of data, while the underlying generative mechanisms remain largely hidden. Consequently, the effectiveness of any strategy remains fundamentally ambiguous. The enabling conditions, by contrast, remain deeply embedded in historically accumulated data, infrastructural positioning, algorithmic treatment, and network configurations. These conditions are not only inaccessible to outside observers, but also difficult to reproduce even by firms that appear superficially similar in terms of their business model, market positioning, or observable configuration of activities.

This leads to a fundamental decoupling between the form and the function of strategy. The form, that is, visible and codifiable actions, can be copied. However, the results, in particular the causal effectiveness of those actions, cannot be guaranteed or reproduced. Even when firms appear to pursue the same strategy, they are likely to operate under different structural configurations. Apparent convergence in observable strategic form may, therefore, conceal divergence in causal effectiveness. What appears as imitation at the level of visible action may generate entirely different outcomes in practice.

The implication is that replication no longer ensures convergence toward best practice. Instead, it often generates misaligned configurations. Firms adopt externally successful practices that are internally inconsistent with their own structural position and, therefore, fail to deliver comparable results. Such outcomes should not be interpreted as failures of implementation alone. This failure should not be interpreted as simple execution deficiency. More often, it reflects the deeper fact that the environment does not provide a common platform on which strategic forms can retain stable meanings.

Crucially, this breakdown cannot be reduced to a mere lack of information. The issue is not only that firms do not know enough. It is that the structures connecting action to outcome are themselves variable. The rules governing visibility, access, and competitive exposure are repeatedly altered by evolving platform architectures and infrastructural systems. Under such conditions, replication becomes epistemically unreliable. Therefore, the problem is not uncertainty about a stable system, but instability of the system itself. Strategy can no longer proceed through the transfer of known solutions. It must be constructed within the specific structural conditions of the present.

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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