Classical strategy theories – whether rooted in industrial organization, resource-based logic, or dynamic capabilities – differ in their prescriptions, but they converge on a foundational premise: environments possess sufficient structural integrity to serve as objects of strategic knowledge. They assume that decision-makers can meaningfully interpret environmental conditions, identify patterns across comparable cases, and design coherent courses of action on the basis of accumulated learning. This premise rests on a set of interrelated assumptions: that the environment can be analyzed prior to action, that it remains sufficiently transparent for causal interpretation, that firm and environment are analytically separable, and that conditions remain stable enough for strategic reasoning to hold over time. However, digital environments challenge not merely the pace of change, but the epistemic foundations of these assumptions. They are structurally open, continuously reconfigured through platform architectures, algorithmic mediation, and ecosystem interdependence. Under such conditions, the environment no longer functions as a stable referent. Categorical boundaries dissolve, causal relationships become opaque, and the conditions of action are altered through interaction itself. The issue is not theoretical obsolescence, but the erosion of the structural conditions under which these theories remain applicable. When the environment ceases to provide durable templates, stable benchmarks, or reliable causal transparency, strategy can no longer be understood primarily as the selection and implementation of predefined models.

The core argument of this book is that contemporary strategy must be reconceptualized as adaptation without templates. When stable referents collapse, viable strategic paths cannot be optimized in advance – they must be constructed through engagement with structurally uncertain conditions. This requires a fundamental shift from foresight-based models toward a configurational and mechanism-based understanding of strategic action. The book develops this reconceptualization through three integrated theoretical contributions. First, it reframes the environment not as a stable context but as a structured ecology, in which platforms function as organizing architectures that shape visibility, access, and interaction without being fully controllable by participating firms. Second, it theorizes strategy as performative construction: firms do not implement predefined plans but generate provisional solutions through distributed experimentation, recursive feedback, and adaptive stabilization. Strategic coherence emerges not from deliberate design but from the interaction of constraints, path-dependent processes, and selective reinforcement. Third, it extends theories of routinization and path dependence by demonstrating how temporary solutions become structurally embedded through coupling, layering, and increasing returns – even in the absence of optimization or deliberate choice. Together, these contributions establish a framework for understanding how firms act, adapt, and stabilize under conditions where templates are structurally absent.

The analysis builds on empirical research conducted in post-socialist and digitally transforming environments, where firms operate under persistent resource constraints, institutional ambiguity, and the absence of established industry standards. These contexts are not marginal or exceptional cases. Rather, they function as revelatory settings that render visible, in amplified and concentrated form, mechanisms of adaptation that are increasingly characteristic of broader economic conditions. In environments where templates have never fully formed or have been repeatedly disrupted, firms cannot rely on benchmarking, best-practice transfer, or stable competitive positioning. Instead, they construct strategy through experimentation without foresight, patchwork integration of heterogeneous systems, and adaptive calibration to opaque feedback signals. By studying adaptation in settings where template-based logic was never available, the book identifies mechanisms that are becoming structurally relevant across digitally mediated environments more generally. The empirical grounding, therefore, serves not to limit the scope of the argument, but to isolate and specify the mechanisms through which strategy operates when stability cannot be assumed.

This book is intended for scholars and advanced students of strategy, organization theory, and entrepreneurship, as well as for practitioners seeking to understand how firms can navigate environments where stability cannot be assumed.

I am grateful to many colleagues who have inspired me along my academic journey – too many to name individually. Nevertheless, I am deeply grateful to Balázs Szepesi and Roland Z. Szabó for their intellectual influence over the past years. Through their questions, critical reflections, and continuous challenge, they contributed significantly to the development of the ideas presented in this book.