How can a firm be sure that it has searched a wide enough range of possibilities that it doesn’t get ‘stuck’ – saddled with less-than-excellent performance – yet is lacking a clear path for improvement because it can’t see the whole potential landscape?

But, again, how does it avoid the instability of continually searching and never settling on an exploitable set of choices? And how can it best handle the complexities that arise when decisions in one part of the firm affect those made in another?

Analysing three real examples that seem to run contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors examine how firms organise themselves to strategise well, and cope with a central challenge of organising: the need to balance search and stability. They show how a shift from decentralisation to integration may be an effective organising sequence, how apparently unnecessary overlap between departments can be beneficial, and how, perversely, more exploration at department level can backfire and produce less exploration for the firm as a whole.

The disparate examples share an underlying logic – that of ensuring the broad, early search a firm needs when interactions among strategic decisions raise the spectre of premature strategy lock-in. The authors also note the potential benefit of the gradual onset of inertia, as part of a firm’s organising to manage the transition from search to stability.

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