Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

5.5 Illustration: Why Visible Success Does Not Transfer

A more revealing way to understand the problem is to consider what it would mean for two firms to be directly comparable. In classical strategy, comparability is taken for granted: firms operating in the same market are assumed to face sufficiently similar conditions for performance differences to be interpreted meaningfully.

In digitally mediated environments, this assumption breaks down. Two firms may operate on the same platform, sell similar products, and follow nearly identical strategies, yet still not be comparable in any meaningful sense. The reason is not hidden information but differentiated conditions of evaluation. Each firm is processed through its own history of interactions, data traces, and system responses. As a result, the same action does not enter a common evaluative space.

The key insight is this: firms are not competing within the same environment, even when they appear to do so. What looks like a shared market is in fact a set of partially overlapping but differentiated conditions of action. Under such conditions, performance differences cannot be interpreted as differences in strategic quality alone, because the conditions under which performance is generated are not equivalent.

This is why templates cannot form. Templates require that similar actions produce comparable outcomes under comparable conditions. When conditions themselves are differentiated, this link breaks. Strategy, therefore, cannot rely on observing what works for others. It must be constructed within the firm’s own evolving conditions of action.

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