27.05.2026

Executives increasingly face challenges that cannot be solved at the level of a single firm. Climate disruption, resource constraints, and social instability are not competitive problems. They are system-level conditions that shape the viability of entire sectors.

Yet corporate strategy remains largely organized around a model built for a different world, one defined by growth, competition, and firm-level optimization. That model assumed stable ecological conditions and treated environmental and social impacts as externalities to be managed at the margins. Today, those assumptions no longer hold [i],[ii],[iii].

As a result, firms encounter a structural contradiction. The systems that define success, capital markets, accounting rules, and supply chains, continue to reward short-term performance, even as long-term viability depends on collective adaptation. Organizations that attempt to move ahead individually often find themselves constrained by partners, competitors, or investors operating under different incentives. As former Bouygues sustainability executive and GenAct founder Fabrice Bonnifet puts it, “we have tried to be exemplary within a broken framework. But the rules of financial, legal, and cultural success still reward extraction over regeneration. Until those rules change collectively, every pioneer will face the same paradox.”

This is not simply a coordination problem. It reflects a deeper limitation in how strategy is defined. As business school professor and Innovation North research-practice founder and leader Tima Bansal notes, “the whole notion of impact is really deeply flawed because it is often narrowly defined and it is hard to measure the impact that any one of us have.” When outcomes are systemic, firm-level optimization becomes insufficient as a guiding logic.

Practitioners confronting these dynamics reach similar conclusions. Laurent Morel, former CEO of Klépierre and President of Carbone 4, observes that under conditions of systemic disruption, incremental adaptation is no longer viable: “in situations of fundamental systemic disruption like the one we are experiencing, the solution cannot lie in the continuation of existing trends. That is simply impossible.”

Taken together, these insights require a shift in the unit of strategy, from the firm to the coalition. The question should no longer how to outperform competitors, but how to coordinate action among interdependent actors operating within shared constraints.

Across emerging initiatives and cross-sector collaborations, a set of recurring practices is beginning to take shape. For managers, these can be understood as design patterns for a more collective form of strategy.

Five design patterns for a collective strategy

1. Build coalitions, not moat: Traditional strategy emphasizes defensive positioning and competitive advantage. Under conditions of shared constraints, advantage increasingly depends on the ability to participate in coalitions that develop common metrics, shared scenarios, and joint learning processes[iv]. Such coalitions are not simply coordination platforms. They create environments where organizations confront constraints together and test what is strategically and operationally feasible. By making assumptions and trade-offs explicit, they reduce opportunities for free-riding and help emerging rules gain legitimacy.
2.  Align purpose and power across organizations: Purpose statements have become widespread, but they often remain disconnected from the incentives and decision rights that shape behavior. This gap becomes more pronounced when multiple organizations are involved. Collective strategy requires aligning purpose, incentives, and power both within and across firms. This involves bringing together decision-makers from different units and organizations to surface tensions and structure how trade-offs are made. Without such alignment, organizations tend to revert to short-term optimization, even when long-term goals are shared. With it, purpose begins to influence decisions in practice rather than remaining a symbolic commitment.
3. Treat externalities as shared design constraints: Environmental and social limits are not firm-specific variables. They are shared boundary conditions that define what is viable at the system level. When treated individually, these constraints invite strategic evasion. When treated collectively, they enable coordination. Coalitions can translate planetary boundaries[v],[vi] into common reference points, allowing organizations to reason more concretely about trade-offs, sequencing, and feasibility. This does not eliminate competition, it reframes it. Firms continue to differentiate through execution, while recognizing that certain constraints cannot be negotiated unilaterally.
4. Experiment collectively and learn openly: Under conditions of uncertainty, no organization can determine in advance which strategies will succeed. Experimentation is therefore essential, but in collective strategy it must be organized so that learning travels beyond the firm conducting the experiment. Collective experimentation brings together actors to test new practices using common assumptions and evaluation criteria. When learning is structured in this way, experimentation supports strategic judgment rather than reinforcing commitment to existing paths. Sharing results, including partial successes and failures, extends the value of these experiments. Transparency transforms isolated trials into collective learning processes, accelerating adaptation across organizations.
5. Coordinate narratives and accountability: Strategic change requires not only new practices but also credible ways of interpreting and communicating progress. Metrics matter, but data rarely changes behavior unless actors can connect it to shared commitments, trade-offs, and responsibilities. Coordinated communication across coalitions helps align expectations, surface tensions, and build credibility. When transparency is practiced collectively, it strengthens accountability and reduces the gap between stated commitments and actual practices. In this sense, narrative becomes a governance tool by shaping how actors interpret constraints, evaluate trade-offs, and commit to shared trajectories.

Strategizing beyond the firm

The shift toward collective strategy does not eliminate competition. It changes where strategic work takes place.

Leaders must move beyond optimizing within their firms to shaping the conditions under which entire systems operate. This involves building coalitions, participating in shared governance, and engaging in collective learning processes that extend across organizational boundaries.

It also requires new capabilities, such as connecting short-term decisions to long-term system effects, engaging with actors operating under different constraints, and navigating trade-offs that cannot be resolved within the firm alone.

Collective strategy also depends on enabling institutional conditions. Coalitions are more likely to endure when regulation creates common baselines, public incentives reduce the cost of transition, and shareholders accept that long-term resilience may require short-term trade-offs. Without these conditions, firms that move first risk being penalized by markets or undercut by competitors. The shift toward collective strategy therefore cannot remain a purely managerial agenda. It also requires engagement with policymakers, investors, and civil society actors who shape the rules under which firms compete.

The transition is neither linear nor comfortable. But continuing to optimize within a model that no longer reflects underlying conditions offers diminishing returns. Organizations that engage early in shaping collective rules and practices will be better positioned to operate under the constraints ahead.

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