Definition
Climate patterns in Wardley's framework are the external forces and rules of the game that affect all players in a landscape. They are patterns of change that organizations must understand but cannot control — analogous to weather in the military terrain metaphor, or to Sun Tzu's "heaven."
Key Climate Patterns
Wardley identifies 31 climate patterns organized across 6 domains (Components, Financial, Speed, Inertia, Competitors, Prediction). Among the most significant:
Everything evolves through supply and demand competition: This is the foundational climate pattern. Components do not stay novel — competition drives them toward commodity. This is not optional or avoidable; it is a property of competitive markets.
Past success breeds inertia: Organizations that succeed with a component at one evolutionary stage resist its movement to the next stage. This creates vulnerability to competitors who embrace the evolution.
Efficiency enables innovation: As components become commoditized (more efficient, cheaper, more accessible), they enable new higher-order systems to emerge. Cloud computing (commodity compute) enabled the SaaS ecosystem. This is the "componentization effect."
Higher-order systems create new sources of worth: When a component becomes a commodity, the value shifts to what it enables — new activities that were previously impossible or uneconomic.
Capital flows to new areas of value: Investment follows the emergence of new higher-order systems, not the commoditizing components.
No choice on evolution: Organizations can delay but not prevent the evolution of components. Attempting to prevent evolution creates a gap that competitors will exploit.
Characteristics change as components evolve: What matters about a component shifts as it evolves. In genesis, experimentation matters. In commodity, operational efficiency matters. Applying genesis practices to commodity (or vice versa) is wasteful.
There is no single culture: Different evolutionary stages require different organizational cultures, methods, and management approaches. This is why "one size fits all" management fails.
Relationship to the Strategy Cycle
Climate patterns sit between Landscape (the map) and Doctrine (organizational principles) in the Strategy Cycle. Understanding climate helps you anticipate how the landscape will change, which informs both what doctrine you need and what gameplay options are available.
Predictive Power
Wardley argues that climate patterns, combined with the map, provide a form of predictability: not when things will change, but in what direction and with what characteristics. This is analogous to understanding that water flows downhill — you cannot predict exactly when a river will carve through a valley, but you can predict the direction of flow.