Uncertainties in Strategy.

In extremely uncertain environments, shaping strategies may deliver higher returns, with lower risk, than they do in less uncertain times. Shape or adapt? For years, executives have regarded the question as perhaps their most fundamental strategic choice. Is it better for a company's competitive position to try to influence, or even determine, the outcome of crucial and currently uncertain elements of an industry's structure and conduct? Or is the wiser course to scope out defensible …

…market evolves. With such a broad range of approaches, no wonder business strategists can't agree on a dominant answer to the shape-or-adapt problem. In fact, even individual companies may not consistently choose one alternative across all issues, business lines, and times. Nor do the data support a one-size-fits-all answer. Research suggests that 86 percent of the biggest business winners from 1985 to 1995 followed predominantly market-shaping strategies.2 Yet the research clearly shows that adapters too can win big.