Foresight, Complexity, and Strategy

Abstract

This chapter argues that strategy in the face of complex foresight horizons should consist of an on-going set of practices that interpret and construct the relationships that comprise the world in which the firm acts. It illustrates the ideas advanced with a story about the entry of ROLM into the PBX market in 1975. The chapter utilizes a few terms that may at first seem like unnecessary jargon, but for which we do not find ready, unambiguous substitutes in ordinary language. These include agent, actor, artifact, space, generative relationships, attributions, and identity. The chapter focuses on various ROLM marketing and strategy documents in the possession of KM, a cofounder of ROLM who led its PBX division, and material collected in a Stanford Graduate School of Business case prepared by Professor Adrian Ryans. ROLM had a strategy when it launched its PBX product, but events quickly invalidated many of the assumptions on which this strategy was based.

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