Etude

From Plans to Bets: Strategy in the Age of Prediction

Every choice is a bet, and the odds are changing fast.

Par Dunigan O'Keeffe, Hernan Saenz, Karen Harris, Sophie Horrocks, et Austin Kimson

First published on avril 13, 2026
min


Strategy has always been about two choices: Where to play and how to win. When the boundaries of your business shifted, it was time to revisit those choices—and your strategy. Today, predicting business shifts has become as important as navigating them. Every decision your company makes is a bet on an uncertain future. Every bet is an exposure. Even doing nothing is a bet that nothing is changing (and probably the one prediction you can be sure is wrong). In the new world of prediction-based strategy, understanding your exposures and being prepared to adapt as signals change becomes a source of competitive advantage. Conviction about your predictions matters in the volatile, post-globalization world. If you have a lot of conviction, you can move faster and commit to bolder, all-in decisions. You worry less about adaptability and focus less on resilience. If you have less conviction, you’re more likely to spread your bets, keeping your options open and your eye on industry signals. You’ll invest more in adaptability and resilience. The new core of strategy Leaders make strategic decisions in two timeframes. The first is today forward: immediate choices about the business over the next 12, 24, or 36 months. The second is future back: a development agenda that prepares the company for what business will look like 3 to 5 years from now. Today-forward and future-back decisions are both based on predictions. Strategy, then, becomes a continuous loop of taking in data, testing your conviction about those predictions, and acting accordingly. Winners will be able to run those cycles faster and better than others. External data is critical, but the winning companies will have an internal data advantage propelling their decision making forward. They will figure out how to learn from their own bleeding-edge customers, from their partners, and from their own capability building efforts. But how can you accelerate the pace? If strategy must move faster, then the organization has to change with it, learning to respond to signals that span technology, geopolitics, energy, sustainability, planetary boundaries, and the workforce. Many people in today’s organizations are no longer sure they understand how to do strategy—and they may be right. The talent you need must match the inputs you must watch. If geopolitics becomes a primary input, someone must understand it deeply. The same logic applies across all signals. Many people in today’s organizations are no longer sure they understand how to do strategy—and they may be right. Technology, particularly AI, can help, allowing organizations to account for far more variables and bring more data into the fold faster. But technology does not provide answers. Management still has to validate that the right data is being used and that the interpretations are insightful, then decide what to do. When volatility dominates, organizations tend to elevate the capabilities they cannot live without. When Covid-19 made operational demands the top priority, many operations executives suddenly found themselves organizing existential efforts to adapt supply chains and manufacturing. Now, CEOs need their strategy functions to convene the debates that persistently test their company’s bets. They need to identify where the company is long or short, assess how those exposures might change under plausible scenarios, and continuously monitor signals for signs of change. Understanding and acting on the strength of your beliefs in future outcomes becomes the new core of strategy. Building for strategy at speed If the task seems daunting, you can take some comfort in the fact that few companies are used to managing strategy at speed. You will likely find (though it may seem less comforting) that fellow CEOs and even your own executive suite can look at the same set of facts and have different levels of conviction about what they mean for business. For most CEOs, building for strategy in volatility starts with questioning their own decisions and their conviction about them—not because they were bad decisions at the time, but because the world has changed dramatically. Do you still believe what you believed three years ago? How about one year ago? Would you bet your company on that? Then, begin to incorporate these behaviors and capabilities into your strategy function. Start strategy with conviction. Make your predictions explicit and then test your conviction, especially when leaders interpret the same facts differently. Treat every major choice as a bet with a posture. Identify what is effectively long, what is short, and what must be hedged. Match investment in prediction, adaptability, and resilience to conviction. High conviction can justify speed and commitment; low conviction requires experiments, careful signal monitoring, and investing in adaptability and resilience. Compete on cycle speed. Build a disciplined signal loop that updates predictions, conviction, and actions faster than your competitors. Rebuild the strategy function to balance your portfolio of bets. Make sure your company has expertise on the real inputs that affect its future (technology, geopolitics, energy, sustainability, planetary boundaries, workforce). Adopt AI to widen the fact-base and improve cycle times—without outsourcing judgment. The goal is not to develop perfect foresight—that’s impossible. It’s to make the bets explicit, understand the exposures they create, and build the adaptability—or, where needed, invest in the resilience—to manage them. The edge will go to the companies that learn to do this at speed: revise the bets, rebalance exposures, repeat as signals shift.

Strategy has always been about two choices: Where to play and how to win. When the boundaries of your business shifted, it was time to revisit those choices—and your strategy.

Today, predicting business shifts has become as important as navigating them. Every decision your company makes is a bet on an uncertain future. Every bet is an exposure. Even doing nothing is a bet that nothing is changing (and probably the one prediction you can be sure is wrong). In the new world of prediction-based strategy, understanding your exposures and being prepared to adapt as signals change becomes a source of competitive advantage.

Conviction about your predictions matters in the volatile, post-globalization world. If you have a lot of conviction, you can move faster and commit to bolder, all-in decisions. You worry less about adaptability and focus less on resilience. If you have less conviction, you’re more likely to spread your bets, keeping your options open and your eye on industry signals. You’ll invest more in adaptability and resilience.

The new core of strategy

Leaders make strategic decisions in two timeframes. The first is today forward: immediate choices about the business over the next 12, 24, or 36 months. The second is future back: a development agenda that prepares the company for what business will look like 3 to 5 years from now.

Today-forward and future-back decisions are both based on predictions. Strategy, then, becomes a continuous loop of taking in data, testing your conviction about those predictions, and acting accordingly. Winners will be able to run those cycles faster and better than others.

External data is critical, but the winning companies will have an internal data advantage propelling their decision making forward. They will figure out how to learn from their own bleeding-edge customers, from their partners, and from their own capability building efforts.

But how can you accelerate the pace?

If strategy must move faster, then the organization has to change with it, learning to respond to signals that span technology, geopolitics, energy, sustainability, planetary boundaries, and the workforce.

Many people in today’s organizations are no longer sure they understand how to do strategy—and they may be right. The talent you need must match the inputs you must watch. If geopolitics becomes a primary input, someone must understand it deeply. The same logic applies across all signals.

Many people in today’s organizations are no longer sure they understand how to do strategy—and they may be right.

Technology, particularly AI, can help, allowing organizations to account for far more variables and bring more data into the fold faster. But technology does not provide answers. Management still has to validate that the right data is being used and that the interpretations are insightful, then decide what to do.

When volatility dominates, organizations tend to elevate the capabilities they cannot live without. When Covid-19 made operational demands the top priority, many operations executives suddenly found themselves organizing existential efforts to adapt supply chains and manufacturing. Now, CEOs need their strategy functions to convene the debates that persistently test their company’s bets. They need to identify where the company is long or short, assess how those exposures might change under plausible scenarios, and continuously monitor signals for signs of change. Understanding and acting on the strength of your beliefs in future outcomes becomes the new core of strategy.

Building for strategy at speed

If the task seems daunting, you can take some comfort in the fact that few companies are used to managing strategy at speed. You will likely find (though it may seem less comforting) that fellow CEOs and even your own executive suite can look at the same set of facts and have different levels of conviction about what they mean for business.

For most CEOs, building for strategy in volatility starts with questioning their own decisions and their conviction about them—not because they were bad decisions at the time, but because the world has changed dramatically. Do you still believe what you believed three years ago? How about one year ago? Would you bet your company on that?

Then, begin to incorporate these behaviors and capabilities into your strategy function.

Start strategy with conviction.

Make your predictions explicit and then test your conviction, especially when leaders interpret the same facts differently.
Treat every major choice as a bet with a posture.

Identify what is effectively long, what is short, and what must be hedged.
Match investment in prediction, adaptability, and resilience to conviction.

High conviction can justify speed and commitment; low conviction requires experiments, careful signal monitoring, and investing in adaptability and resilience.
Compete on cycle speed.

Build a disciplined signal loop that updates predictions, conviction, and actions faster than your competitors.
Rebuild the strategy function to balance your portfolio of bets.

Make sure your company has expertise on the real inputs that affect its future (technology, geopolitics, energy, sustainability, planetary boundaries, workforce). Adopt AI to widen the fact-base and improve cycle times—without outsourcing judgment.

The goal is not to develop perfect foresight—that’s impossible. It’s to make the bets explicit, understand the exposures they create, and build the adaptability—or, where needed, invest in the resilience—to manage them. The edge will go to the companies that learn to do this at speed: revise the bets, rebalance exposures, repeat as signals shift.