Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

6.2 Generative Enactment: The Structural Role of Experimentation

Once knowledge can no longer reliably precede action, experimentation moves to the center of strategy formation. In much of the management literature, experimentation is treated as a discretionary activity associated with innovation, entrepreneurial search, or organizational exploration. Firms experiment when they choose to test alternatives. In the argument developed here, experimentation must be understood differently. It becomes structurally embedded in strategic action because the usual alternatives to experimentation, such as replication, benchmarking, and template-based transfer, no longer provide sufficient guidance under differentiated conditions.

The second mechanism, generative enactment, captures this shift. Firms do not experiment simply because experimentation is attractive or fashionable. They experiment because action must now perform two functions at once. It must sustain operations in the present, and it must generate knowledge about what may be viable under evolving conditions. Action, therefore, becomes both operational and epistemic. Experimentation is not an add-on to strategy. It is the condition under which strategy becomes possible.

This form of experimentation differs from controlled experimentation in three important respects. First, it is continuous rather than episodic. Firms do not step out of ordinary activity to test and then return to a stable baseline. They experiment through ongoing engagement with the environment, where adjustments generate signals that shape the next round of action. Second, it is embedded rather than isolated. Experiments take place within live operations, where multiple variables interact simultaneously and cannot always be separated cleanly. Third, it is generative rather than merely confirmatory. Because digital systems can produce outcomes beyond initial expectations, experimentation may reveal new possibilities, new constraints, and new couplings rather than simply confirming or rejecting prior assumptions (Madhok et al., 2022).

Research on theory-based learning helps clarify this process. Firms often proceed through partial and revisable assumptions that guide action without fully determining it (Ehrig et al., 2022). These assumptions are neither rigid plans nor random guesses. They function as provisional interpretive frames that make experimentation more disciplined. This is important because strategy does not dissolve into trial and error. Still, firms must construct direction under conditions where the validity of action cannot be externally guaranteed in advance.

The strategic implication is fundamental. Strategy is no longer applied to the environment as if the environment were a stable object awaiting implementation. It is progressively constructed through interaction with that environment. Firms act to generate information, and that information reshapes subsequent action. Strategy, therefore, emerges through iterative cycles of enactment rather than through prior specification.

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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