ESCP ALUMNI magazine - Special Issue 2022 - 24

Cover Story ❙ Analysis
By Arthur Jeanne
" In 2020, surviving
was the only option "
Can strategy survive in an uncertain context? According to ESCP professor Frédéric FRERY (89),
the author of Stratégique, the best-seller of all French strategy books, the answer is no.
Zoom for instance; if you had told its founder
that his company would be valued 7 times
as much as the biggest global airlines, he
would not have believed it. Yet, the traumatic
COVID-19 pandemic was obviously a great
opportunity for Zoom, as well as for online
shopping, communication, or streaming. They
did not seek it, they did not do it on purpose,
they just took advantage of it.
Frédéric FRERY (89)
professor
You insist on the difference between
hazard and uncertainty. What is it?
It is a common mistake to get the two concepts
mixed up, though they are totally different.
Hazard is risk, and risk should be calculated.
That's what an insurer's job is about. For
instance, when you play roulette, you already
know what can come up. The future is closed,
there is no uncertainty. You don't know what
is going to come up, but you know what may
come up. Uncertainty is completely different,
as it means anything can come up. It would
be like playing roulette with infinite numbers.
Does it mean uncertainty cannot be
an opportunity?
Of course, it can! I did not say uncertainty
was a bad thing, it is just that it cannot be
foreseen. In the early 90s, if you had told JK
Rowling that she would make billions of
pounds when she was writing Harry Potter in
pubs because her apartment had no heating
system and after 11 publishers refused her
book, she would have called you crazy. Take
Was the COVID-19 pandemic a
genuinely unforeseeable event?
Not at all! Since 1900, we have had epidemics
about every 20 years. There is nothing new.
We could not know when or how it would
happen, but it was no surprise. The event per
se was not surprising. In the early days of the
pandemic, some observers even said that
it was a black swan, i.e., an event that was
beyond everything we had observed so far
and that wiped out what we knew of a specific
topic. Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the originator
of this theory, immediately said: " Not at all! "
There have been many other worse epidemics
than this one. It is not rare for humanity to be
hit by an epidemic. What was truly impossible
to foresee was the reaction of the authorities
regarding the pandemic.
What do you mean?
Placing 3 billion people in quarantine was
completely new! For the first time in history,
we refused to let people die and do nothing.
During the Spanish flu or the Hong Kong flu,
we embraced fatality. Things are different now;
governments have tried to outdo each other
in terms of precaution and, consequently,
3 billion people have been locked down, to
sum things up. I am not saying it was a bad
thing, I am saying we could not have seen it
coming and it was a cause of uncertainty.
You don't seem to be in favour of the
way the precautionary principle was
followed. Was it too much?
I think it was an extremely strong mark of
humanism. But the precautionary principle
can also make the present unbearable to
live in. You can kill the present by trying to
preserve a future that may never exist. There
have always been tragedies, like terrorist
attacks, wars, or pandemics. You should not
keep this in mind all the time, otherwise it
could lead to paralysing side effects. By being
too careful, political leaders could come up
with solutions that are worse than the original
problem. Macron's " whatever it takes " policy
was, in this sense, a bit scary.
Can you plan a strategy in a truly
uncertain environment?
It is hard because being in an open
environment means that complexity is much
bigger than when you play roulette or roll
dice. However, the main asset of strategy is
that there may be forerunners, weak portents
that may create some form of anticipation.
So, anything can happen, but you can try
to foresee it, in all modesty. A strategist or a
decision-maker is here to analyse these signals
and anticipate. Strategy is about being able to
anticipate.
You wrote that it is absurd to try to
overcome uncertainty. Why?
If there is no way you can anticipate, if we
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ESCP Alumni Magazine Special issue ❙ 2022

ESCP ALUMNI magazine - Special Issue 2022

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