This is a fantastic article detailing how businesses should embrace and use uncertainty to their advantage rather than becoming entrenched and inflexible in the face of inertia of their own creation.  I specifically like the following quote with regards to reassesing the predictability and stability of one’s core business :

“… Stop, write down your most significant assumptions and see how they’re mapping against the changing realities that you’re dealing with right now.”

If stability is a ruse in the face of uncertainty, than sustainable competitive advantage, in the structural sense, is also a ruse.  Don’t be a slave to your Powerpoint presentation or your spreadsheets or key performance metrics predictions, as they have just as much sunk cost as any other investment.  Be clear about your assumptions, and be even clearer about what feedback is necessary today that would crack their validity.  As people have heard me say, when dealing with strategic innovation under uncertainty, I’d rather shoot with a shotgun in a general direction than a laser at a specific point.  Small, measurable, quick-to-assess wins and failures let you learn and adapt fast.  Just as there’s no such thing as bad stocks, just bad prices, there’s no such thing as strategic failures, just bad costs in terms of financial, human and temporal resourses.  So fail often, fail quick, and fail cheap.