Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

6.5 Inferential Navigation: Acting Under Partial Opacity

The environment described so far is rich in signals but poor in full interpretability. The fifth mechanism, inferential navigation, explains how firms act when outcomes are partially observable but the causal mechanisms behind them remain only partly accessible. This section extends the earlier argument by showing that experimentation is not only a mode of search. It is also a mode of interpretation under opacity. Action and interpretation, therefore, become inseparable processes, jointly shaping how firms understand and navigate their environment.

Digital environments often provide abundant data. Firms can observe rankings, engagement patterns, conversion changes, timing effects, or other performance indicators. What they often cannot observe directly is the causal logic that produced those outcomes. They face selective visibility rather than transparent explanation. Organizations, therefore, act not on the basis of full causal understanding, but through inference, provisional interpretation, and iterative revision. Research on computational opacity shows how actors work with opaque systems by assembling partial interpretations from observed effects and recurring adjustments (Rostain et al., 2023). Thus, observed outcomes function as signals that guide action without fully revealing the mechanisms that generate them.

Because platform rules, algorithms, and infrastructural conditions continue to evolve, even though these interpretations remain provisional. Firms update working assumptions through repeated interaction, combining observed patterns with heuristic reasoning and situated judgment. What guides action is not certainty, but a continuously revised understanding of what seems to work under current conditions. Learning, therefore, becomes iterative and inferential rather than final. This is another reason why strategy cannot be reduced to foresight. The strategist is not someone who knows enough in advance, but someone who can act under uncertainty while continuously refining a workable understanding of the environment.

Experimentation plays an essential role here. It generates variation, but it also produces iterative, local, and provisional adjustments that allow firms to refine their understanding of what works under specific conditions. Over time, these adjustments guide action without ever fully resolving uncertainty.

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