Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

6.3 Recursive Path-Dependent Feedback: Trajectories Without Blueprints

Experimentation does not imply randomness. Once action becomes a primary source of knowledge, strategic development proceeds through recursive feedback. The third mechanism, recursive path-dependent feedback, explains how trajectories emerge from iterative action even when firms do not have blueprints.

Each organizational action generates feedback that conditions the next set of possibilities. Some responses reinforce the direction already taken. Others redirect it, expose hidden constraints, or reveal that an apparently promising move is locally unworkable. Over time, these successive adjustments form trajectories. Strategy, therefore, unfolds as a path shaped by accumulated responses to action. Direction is not imposed; it is progressively constructed.

This logic aligns with path-centric perspectives that explain outcomes through the accumulation of contingent actions and recursive adjustments rather than through predefined objectives alone (Pentland et al., 2022). Path dependence operates not only at the level of large commitments, but also through routines, habits, interface choices, reporting systems, data structures, and recurring responses to platform feedback. Small variations can accumulate into strategically consequential trajectories because they shape what is easier, harder, more visible, or more plausible in later rounds of action.

Several dynamics follow from this. Early actions may have disproportionate influence because they shape subsequent exposure, learning opportunities, and patterns of reinforcement. Feedback also operates across multiple temporal scales. Some signals are immediate, such as visibility shifts or short-term user responses. Others emerge later, such as infrastructural rigidity, routine sedimentation, or unexpected dependence on particular system conditions. In addition, feedback relationships may be non-linear. Small adjustments can trigger disproportionate effects, while seemingly significant actions may produce only weak movement.

Strategy, then, is not best understood as a set of discrete decisions linked together after the fact. It is better understood as a trajectory formed through recursive interaction with the environment. This reframing shifts the unit of analysis from decisions to evolving paths.

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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