Abstract
All too often strategic surprises stem from an unforeseen error in the mapping out of the terrain that lies ahead. Surprise has an uneasy relationship with parsimonious planning and the unexpected, whether adversity or discovery, is antithetical to good strategizing in many a view. Strategies are locked into and preserved in committed organizations, supported by confirmation bias (Tuchman 1984). The further commitment to increasingly known, standard strategies is not limited to specific organizations and even cuts across sectors through isomorphic pressure and bias for known strategy – until it is discovered to no longer work (e.g., Tripsas and Gavetti 2000; Vuori and Huy 2016; Kaplan and Tripsas 2008). However, at the same time, let us remember that newness, variation and novelty is the purpose of strategizing and the basis for competitive differentiation. We argue that good strategy not only recognizes surprise but harnesses the possibilities of discovery to enable, and leverage, strategic novelty. The discovery of value and the valuing of discovery, both present a unique framing for strategists that reasserts new in their role, and reimagines an anticipated future yet to be constructed that enables strategic novelty.
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Paukku, M., Välikangas, L. (2019). The Discovery of Strategic Novelty: Learning from Things Yet to Happen. In: Poli, R. (eds) Handbook of Anticipation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91554-8_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91554-8_15
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