The adaptive strategy approach is most suitable for environments that are unpredictable and difficult to change. In these environments, it is difficult for companies to achieve sustainable competitive advantage pursuing the classical approach. Instead, companies aim to achieve a series of transient or short-term advantages by continually monitoring their environments and adjusting their objectives, updating their strategies, modifying their resources, and reconfiguring their capabilities.

The Strategy Palette is one of the more recent and probably the most recognized framework for selecting the appropriate strategy approach. The framework’s use of dichotomous variables with low and high values makes it simple and easy to understand. It does not stop at identifying the strategy approaches, instead further linking them with the relevant strategy tools. BCG also has an interactive website for the strategy tools providing a short description of the tool, its author(s), and the original reference. The linking of the various strategy tools to strategy approaches allows for the creation of a strategy toolbox for each approach that can be used by strategists []. Moreover, the book provides several case studies and vignettes to explicate the strategy approaches.

BCG’s Strategy Palette is based on three key contingent variables: unpredictability, malleability, and harshness, resulting in five strategy approaches: classical, adaptive, shaping, visionary, and renewal. It serves as a good introduction to strategy approaches and provides guidance on the relevant strategy tools that can be utilized for each approach. However, using only dichotomous variables makes this a more reductionist framework which does not lend itself towards capturing the different degrees of variation and complexity within the variables. Therefore, it does not allow for a more extensive and pertinent set of strategy approaches to be considered. 

Second, the mapping logic of the strategy approaches to the strategy space is questionable, as it assumes that the different states of the strategy space can only be served by one strategy approach. Mapping exercises are different from typology constructions which require mutually exclusive and comprehensively exhaustive (MECE) categories []. Strategy approaches do not have to be mutually exclusive (ME) in their coverage of the strategy space, but they should be comprehensively exhaustive (CE). For instance, the visionary strategy approach and most of the related tools associated with it, which are prescribed to predictable and malleable environments, can also be used in environments characterized by unpredictability and malleability.

The shaping strategy approach emphasizes collaboration through the orchestration of activities with other players in the ecosystem. Shapers engage, orchestrate, and evolve. Shapers first engage other players in the ecosystem in the creation of a shared vision for the industry. Subsequently, they orchestrate the collaborative activities through a platform. Lastly, they evolve the platform by scaling it up. BCG research has identified five strategy tools which can be used with the shaping approach. These strategy tools include S-curve, ecosystem strategy, co-opetition, open innovation, and shared value framework.