But quite a bit can often be known despite this. The uncertainty that remains after the best possible analysis has been undertaken is what we call residual uncertainty-for example, the outcome of an ongoing regulatory debate or the performance attributes of a technology still in development. Second, if the right analyses are performed, many factors that are currently unknown to a company's management are in fact knowable-for instance, performance attributes for current technologies, the elasticity of demand for certain stable categories of products, and competitors' plans to expand capacity. First, it is often possible to identify clear trends, such as market demographics, that can help define potential demand for a company's future products or services. Four levels of uncertaintyĪvailable strategically relevant information tends to fall into two categories. What follows is a framework for determining the level of uncertainty surrounding strategic decisions and for tailoring strategy to that uncertainty. Rarely do managers know absolutely nothing of strategic importance, even in the most uncertain environments. Making systematically sound strategic decisions under uncertainty requires an approach that avoids this dangerous binary view. ![]() Another danger lies at the other extreme: if managers can't find a strategy that works under traditional analysis, they may abandon the analytical rigor of their planning process altogether and base their decisions on gut instinct. When the future is truly uncertain, this approach is at best marginally helpful and at worst downright dangerous: underestimating uncertainty can lead to strategies that neither defend a company against the threats nor take advantage of the opportunities that higher levels of uncertainty provide. The process often involves underestimating uncertainty in order to lay out a vision of future events sufficiently precise to be captured in a discounted-cash-flow (DCF) analysis. At the heart of the traditional approach to strategy lies the assumption that executives, by applying a set of powerful analytic tools, can predict the future of any business accurately enough to choose a clear strategic direction for it.
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