Natural or Strategic?

"Natural competition is evolutionary.
Stategic competition is revolucionary.

Natural competition is really low-risk incremental trial and error. Small changes that seem to be beneficial are gradually adopted and maintained. Other small changes are tried and added. It is learning by trial and error without the need for either commitment or foresight. It is the adaptation now to the way things are now. It is the basic pattern of evolution. It is Darwinian natural selection. It functions even if controlled by pure chance or expedency. For these very reasons it is inevitably very conservative, gradual, and produces nearly imperceptible change near term regardless of the ultimate consequences long term.

Strategic competition by its very commitments seeks to make a very large change in competitive relationships. Its revolutionary character is moderated only by two fundamentar inhibitions. Strategic failure can be as sweeping in its consequences as strategic success.

(...)

Strategic success depends upon the culture, perceptions, attitudes, and a characteristic behavior of competitors and their mutual awareness of each other."

Bruce Henderson, 1980