STRATEGY UNDER COMPLEXITY - FOSTERING GENERATIVE RELATIONSHIPS

What Is a strategy? The answer to this question ought to depend on the foresight horizon: how far ahead, and how much, the strategist thinks he can foresee, When the very structure of the firm's world is underg oing cascades of rapid change, and interpretations about the identity of agents and artifacts are characterized by ambiguity, we say that th e foresight horizon is complex. We argue that strategy in the face of complex foresight horizons should consist in an on-going set oi practi ces that interpret and construct the relationships which comprise the world in which the firm acts. Our discussion focuses on two intertwine d kinds of strategic practices. The first is cognitive: a firm 'popula tes its world' by positing who fives there and interpreting what they do. The second is structural: the firm fosters generative relationship s within and across its boundaries-relationships that produce new sour ces of value which cannot be foreseen in advance. We illustrate the id eas advanced in this article with a story about the entry of ROLM into the PBX market in 1975.