From Competition to Creation: A Generative Theory of Strategy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
- 1American University of Beirut
Abstract
Strategic management has long privileged competitive positioning, differentiation, and relative advantage. These concepts remain valuable, but their prominence can subordinate the generative purpose of strategy to the comparative logic of rivalry. This article argues that innovation and value creation should organize strategy for organizations seeking renewal, especially in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Differentiation and competitive advantage are treated as possible consequences of meaningful innovation rather than its defining purposes. Integrating strategic management, strategic-orientation research, and evidence on human–AI cognition, the article develops a generative theory of strategy and defines generative orientation through purpose framing, search breadth, and exploratory commitment. It specifies two mechanisms through which excessive rivalry orientation may suppress creation: competitive imagination fixation, in which rivals become the reference frame that bounds opportunity search, and competitive resource displacement, in which defensive spending crowds out exploratory investment. Because the two mechanisms can reinforce each other, they may lock organizations into increasingly skilled competition within inherited categories. The article then argues that AI amplifies whichever orientation governs its use, accelerating imitation under rivalry-centered purposes and exploration under generative ones, while introducing risks of algorithmic convergence. A five-stage iterative framework links strategic imagination, opportunity construction, disciplined experimentation, capability and ecosystem orchestration, and value realization and renewal. Nine directional propositions, a falsification-oriented research design, and boundary conditions establish an agenda for empirical work. Competition, marketing, and disciplined execution are not dismissed; they are repositioned within a wider undertaking: creating valuable possibilities that did not previously exist.
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BibTeX
@misc{matta2026from,
title = {{From Competition to Creation: A Generative Theory of Strategy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence}},
author = {David (Daoud) Matta},
howpublished = {Zenodo},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23634489},
url = {https://zenodo.org/records/23634489},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - From Competition to Creation: A Generative Theory of Strategy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
AU - David (Daoud) Matta
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/25
PB - Zenodo
DO - 10.5281/zenodo.23634489
UR - https://zenodo.org/records/23634489
AB - Strategic management has long privileged competitive positioning, differentiation, and relative advantage. These concepts remain valuable, but their prominence can subordinate the generative purpose of strategy to the comparative logic of rivalry. This article argues that innovation and value creation should organize strategy for organizations seeking renewal, especially in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Differentiation and competitive advantage are treated as possible consequences of meaningful innovation rather than its defining purposes. Integrating strategic management, strategic-orientation research, and evidence on human–AI cognition, the article develops a generative theory of strategy and defines generative orientation through purpose framing, search breadth, and exploratory commitment. It specifies two mechanisms through which excessive rivalry orientation may suppress creation: competitive imagination fixation, in which rivals become the reference frame that bounds opportunity search, and competitive resource displacement, in which defensive spending crowds out exploratory investment. Because the two mechanisms can reinforce each other, they may lock organizations into increasingly skilled competition within inherited categories. The article then argues that AI amplifies whichever orientation governs its use, accelerating imitation under rivalry-centered purposes and exploration under generative ones, while introducing risks of algorithmic convergence. A five-stage iterative framework links strategic imagination, opportunity construction, disciplined experimentation, capability and ecosystem orchestration, and value realization and renewal. Nine directional propositions, a falsification-oriented research design, and boundary conditions establish an agenda for empirical work. Competition, marketing, and disciplined execution are not dismissed; they are repositioned within a wider undertaking: creating valuable possibilities that did not previously exist.
ER -