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Foreword from Richard Nelson
Economics and the other social sciences grew up in an era when physics was the model of what a strong science should be like, but in recent years more and more social scientists have turned to biology, particularly evolutionary biology, as a model. Today there are significant bodies of research and writing taking an evolutionary perspective on how firms, technologies, industries, broader economic structures, institutions, and various aspect of human culture change over time. The evolutionary conceptions used in these fields of study differ in important ways from those in analysis of biological evolution, but all of this work draws heavily on post-Darwinian evolutionary theory.
This book is concerned with recent developments in evolutionary biology, and how they might be adapted for use in evolutionary social science, particular in study of the evolution of technologies and the artefacts they spawn. The focus is on the concepts of punctuated equilibrium, speciation, and exaptation, with most of the writing concerned with the latter. The book is rich in discussion both of the biology involved, and of how these conceptions can enrich studies of how technologies and their artefacts evolve. While the chapters of this book have a range of authors, the various pieces add up to a coherent whole. A very interesting read.
Richard Nelson Professor Emeritus of International
and
The Center on Capitalism and Society
Public Affairs, Business, and Law
Columbia University, New York, United States
Foreword from Franco Malerba
This is a timely and must-read book edited by Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio, two leading scholars in management and innovation quite active in the area of evolutionary economics and strategy. In a sharp and coherent way, the book presents and discusses the impact that recent developments in evolutionary biology have had on innovation studies, management, and economics. Cattani and Mastrogiorgio successfully link new key concepts in evolutionary biology to the understanding of the economy as a continuously evolving system, in which the emergence of novelty plays a major role and in which major unpredictable changes alternate with periods of relative stability.
The book enriches evolutionary thinking in economics, innovation, and management, pioneered by the seminal book An evolutionary theory of economic change by Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter in 1982, and expanded over the years by the work of Stan Metcalfe, Giovanni Dosi, Joel Mokyr, Dan Levinthal, Kurth Dopfer, Howard Aldrich, Paolo Saviotti, Luigi Orsenigo, and many other scholars. As it has developed, the evolutionary paradigm has been centred on innovation as a key driver of economic growth and industrial transformation, on adaptation and change as major features of the evolution of technology, industry, and the economy and on three basic mechanisms of evolution (variation, selection, and retention). Needless to say, these developments in evolutionary theory have had a tremendous impact on innovation studies, strategy, and management.
Among the many topics addressed by this book—from evolution, speciation, and unprestateability, to evolutionary theory and simulations, technological evolution and complexity, cognition and innovation, cultural evolution, and social innovation—two stand prominently as pillars for a better understanding of technological change and evolutionary strategies: punctuated equilibrium and exaptation. Up to now, many evolutionary contributions in examining technological change have focused on adaptation and the incremental nature of innovation. The perspective of punctuated equilibrium discussed in the book identifies a pattern of change in technologies and industries in which adaptation and incremental change are interrupted by sudden bursts of disruption and introduction of novelty. This has significant implications for the study of industrial transformation as a process in which
periods of gradual change are followed by periods of radical innovations and discontinuities, as shown by the history of industrialized economies over the last centuries, or by the case of the evolution of electronics with the discovery of the transistor, the introduction of the microprocessor, the emergence of the internet, and the rise of mobile phones.
The second pillar is represented by exaptation: a character used for a specific function or application may be suddenly co-opted for a novel and unanticipated function. Thus, a technology or an artefact may have inherent and unpredictable potentials for totally new applications. This is quite common in technological and industrial evolution, as clearly illustrated in the book by the cases of fibre optics by Corning and of the metal monoplane and the airframes revolution by Fokker. But while the notion of exaptation has been a major step forward in evolutionary biology, it has received much less attention in the study of innovation and strategy. This comes as a surprise because exaptation adds a mechanism leading to unexpected and sudden functional shifts in existing technologies, which differs from existing theories of speciation as a process of adaptation of a technology to a new domain of application. Furthermore, the implications of exaptation for strategy are significant. Because of the pervasive presence of uncertainty and serendipity in technological change, it is impossible to identify ex ante all of the possible uses and applications of existing technologies. Therefore, evolutionary search strategies and appropriate organizational designs are called for. In the book, Cattani and Mastrogiorgio propose a shadow option approach in order to recognize the potential new applications or the new uses embodied but hidden in the current technologies and artefacts.
Other general considerations on technological and economic evolution may also be drawn from this book. Concepts and theories presented in the book characterize evolution and speciation as a process of horizontal transfer of existing functional modules that generates major innovations. This differs from the well-known evolutionary process of vertical transmission and the gradual accumulation of novelty over time. This characterization has major implications for the understanding of the economy as an evolving, complex system and of technological evolution as a dynamic network with a reticular structure of complementary relationships. Furthermore, this characterization opens a new link between evolutionary biology and biological evolution on one side and the analysis of technological and cultural evolution on the other.
In sum, I am convinced that this book will be of great interest to a large variety of scholars of innovation, strategy, and economics by showing how evolutionary theory is advancing and how fertile it is for a wide range of
Foreword from Franco Malerba ix
research questions. Cattani, Mastrogiorgio, and the other authors— Carignani, Felin, Kauffman, Petracca, Palumbo, Unrau, and Gabora—introduce new concepts from evolutionary biology and show why they are significant for our understanding of innovation and strategy. The chapters in the book present a clear and persuasive argument, using various methodologies, from theory, to case studies, to modelling. These methodologies complement each other quite effectively and provide a multidimensional analysis of the progress occurring in evolutionary theory. From this book, the interested reader will acquire a broad view of new perspectives in evolutionary theory, and new ideas of how to develop our understanding of the complexity of technological, industrial, and economic evolution.
Franco Malerba Professor of Applied Economics Department of Management and Technology and ICRIOS Bocconi University, Milan, Italy
List of Figures xiii
List of Contributors xv
1. New Developments in Evolutionary Innovation: An Introduction 1
Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio
2. New Frontiers: Punctuated Equilibrium, Speciation, and Exaptation in Innovation 7
Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio
3. On The Origins of The Airframe Revolution: Managing Exaptive Radical Innovation 28
Giuseppe Carignani
4. A Non-Predictive View: Evolution, Unprestateability, Disequilibrium
Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio
5. New Evolutionary Theory Via Simulation: NK Landscapes and Beyond 75
Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio
6. From Trees to Networks: Technological Evolution from the Complexity Angle 97
Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio
7. The Search Function and Evolutionary Novelty 113
Teppo Felin and Stuart Kauffman
8. Extended Cognition and The Innovation Process
Antonio Mastrogiorgio, Enrico Petracca, and Riccardo Palumbo
9. Organizing for Unprestateability: An Option-Based Approach
Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio
10. The Cultural Evolution of Creative Ideas and Social Innovations: A Complex Systems Approach
Mike Unrau and Liane Gabora
Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio
List of Figures
2.1 Phylogenetic trees: phyletic gradualism, punctuated equilibrium, and technological evolution
3.1 Fokker D.VIII ‘parasol’ monoplane
3.2 Modular exaptation: dimensions and taxonomy
3.3 Morphological change in WWI airfoils
3.4 Thick wings. Stylized process of gradual revolution (graphical representation)
4.1
4.2 Indifference curves of utility and the budget constraint
4.3
4.4 The bowl as an open system: second law and disequilibrium
4.5 Complex networks and disequilibrium
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5
5.6
5.7 Gavrilets’ holey landscapes (figure from Gavrilets, 1997)
5.8 Gavrilets’ holey landscapes: speciation dynamics (figure from Gavrilets, 2009)
5.9 Modelling exaptation with the quantum formalism
6.1 Patent data as complex citation networks
6.2 Identifying paths in a complex citation network with ‘connectivity analysis’
6.3
6.4
6.5 The island approach
6.6 The genetic approach (figure adapted from Martinalli and Nomaler, 2014)
9.1 Exaptive functional expansion, diversification, and firm performance
9.2 Resource redeployments and paths of use in productive recombinations
9.3 Shadow optionality in a redeployment setting
9.4 Shadow optionality, inefficiency, and arbitrage opportunities
List of Contributors
Giuseppe Carignani is a researcher, engineer, and professor in the Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Udine.
Gino Cattani is Professor of Strategy and Organization Theory at the Stern School of Business, Department of Management and Organizations, New York University.
Teppo Felin is a professor of strategy and the Academic Director of the Diploma in Strategy and Innovation at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
Liane Gabora is an interdisciplinary psychology professor at the University of British Columbia.
Stuart Kauffman is an emeritus professor of biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and an affiliate faculty member at the Institute for Systems Biology.
Antonio Mastrogiorgio is a researcher at the Laboratory for the Analysis of Complex Economic Systems and at the Neuroscience Lab, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca.
Mariano Mastrogiorgio is Assistant Professor of Management at IE Business School, Department of Strategy, where he teaches Introduction to Management and Strategic Management in the undergraduate programmes.
Riccardo Palumbo is Professor of Business and Behavioural Economics and co-ordinator of the Unit of Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics in the Department of Neurosciences, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University of Chieti-Pescara.
Enrico Petracca is a research associate at the School of Economics, Management, and Statistics, University of Bologna.
Mike Unrau is currently an adjunct faculty member at Mount Royal University, Canada, and a PhD student of Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
New Developments in Evolutionary Innovation
An Introduction
Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio
The publication of ‘An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change’ by Nelson and Winter (1982) has had a major impact on economics and on related fields such as innovation and strategy. All of these fields have received a further impulse owing to recent re-examinations and extensions of evolutionary theory (Nelson et al., 2018; Malerba et al., 2016). At its core, evolutionary theory sees the economy as a system that is continually in motion because of continual changes in technology that are endogenous to the economy and, more importantly, intrinsically evolutionary. A paradigm that underlies several studies in this tradition is the concept of neo-Darwinian evolution, as indicated by Nelson et al. (2018): ‘the term “evolutionary economics” obviously carries the connotation that this orientation to economic analysis has something in common with the perspective of Darwinian evolutionary biology’ (p. 25). Neo-Darwinian evolution is, in essence, the idea that the unit of the evolutionary process (e.g. a technological artefact) is subject to a dynamic of variation, selection, and retention leading to adaptation to a predefined function.
It is worth noting how Darwin himself recognized the subtleties of adaptive dynamics, particularly the fact that the function of a biological trait may shift during evolutionary history (Darwin, 1859). From the 1970s, these initial observations have received a more systematic treatment in new theories that have profoundly changed the field of evolutionary biology. In this book, we refer to the frameworks of punctuated equilibrium, speciation, and exaptation (Gould, 2007). Despite their significant influence in evolutionary biology, these advancements have been reflected partially in evolutionary approaches to economics, innovation, and strategy. Of course, the field is
vast, and the exceptions are numerous (e.g. Cattani, 2006; Levinthal, 1998; Tushman and Anderson, 1986). However, to our surprise, a systematic recognition of these topics is still mostly scattered or missing. The aim of this book is to fill this gap, review these advancements, and contextualize them in the current evolutionary debate in economics, innovation, and strategy.
These new advancements can shed new light on some of the key assumptions of evolutionary theory, such as the idea of the economy as a complex system that is continually in motion and is far from equilibrium (if this equilibrium even exists). The concept of ‘exaptation’ (Andriani and Cattani, 2016; Gould and Vrba, 1982), for instance, refers to technologies, artefacts, and resources that evolved for other uses and functions (or no function at all) and were later co-opted for new functions, very often serendipitously. An example is the drug Marsilid, which was originally designed for tuberculosis, but was discovered to make tuberculotic patients particularly euphoric, thus becoming the first antidepressant drug (Andriani et al., 2017). These developments are pervasive in the history of technology and are highly impactful: they can lead to new dominant designs that shake existing industries, as shown by the turbojet revolution (Carignani et al., 2019), or even to the radical emergence of new industries, as shown by the pharmaceutical and chemical industry, whose birth can be traced back to multiple exaptations starting from coal tar (Andriani and Carignani, 2014). Moreover, owing to their intrinsic nature, these developments are highly unpredictable and fundamentally ‘unprestateable’—that is, the phase space of economic evolution is also inherently unstable, a-causal and, perhaps, lawless in a classical sense (Kauffman, 2016; Koppl et al., 2015).
To appreciate these ideas fully, it is useful to recall the concept of ‘affordances’, which refer to the multiple latent uses and functions embodied in technologies, artefacts, and resources. For example, a kettle can be used to pour boiling water into a tea cup, crack nuts with its bottom surface, and so on (Gibson, 1979). The affordances of an object are potentially infinite, and their emergence—via exaptation and related processes—is highly contextual and mediated by the heterogeneity of actor-specific perception (Felin et al., 2016). Therefore, it is simply impossible to pre-state all the possible affordances, uses, and functions of an object. Assuming that the value of something is, in essence, a reflection of the best use among all possible uses, then there is no value for a market price to converge to—in a classical equilibrium-like sense. Moreover, as implied by the causation debate in biology (Okasha, 2009) and as shown by exaptation, existing biological and technological traits and functions are not necessarily the result of natural selection because they could have been originally selected for different functions or have no original
An Introduction 3
function at all. In other words, biological and technological traits may not be caused by selection, as implied by neo-Darwinian theory (Okasha, 2009). If by ‘cause’ we mean some sort of ‘differential impact entailed by law’ (Koppl et al., 2015: p. 12), the existence of laws that govern evolution becomes problematic, at least in a classical equilibrium-like sense.
The rest of the book explores some of these issues and is organized as follows. Chapter 2 (Cattani and Mastrogiorgio) reviews the developments of evolutionary biology, with a particular emphasis on punctuated equilibrium, speciation, exaptation, and the Woesian model, and their applications to the technological case. This chapter discusses some broad implications, such as the role of serendipity and unprestateability in technological change and, consequently, the importance of innovating through an option-based logic. Chapter 3 (Carignani) digs deeper into exaptation by analysing a case study of the ‘airframe revolution’. The chapter reconstructs the microhistorical events that, starting from a modular exaptation in the wing system, led to the emergence of a new dominant design that shook the entire aircraft industry. By building on the concepts, models, and theories introduced in Chapters 2 and 3, Chapter 4 (Cattani and Mastrogiorgio) aims to link the new developments in evolutionary theory to the debate on unprestateability and disequilibrium in economic systems. Owing to the complexity of the debate, this chapter sketches a very general map that builds on the intuitions of others (Mirowski, 1989; Beinhocker, 2007; Kauffman, 2000; Koppl et al., 2015), to which we refer the interested reader for further details. Moving from theory to applications, Chapter 5 (Cattani and Mastrogiorgio) proposes some computational approaches to model the evolutionary phenomena (punctuated equilibrium, speciation, and exaptation) of interest in this volume. A standard approach is the so-called NK modelling approach; however, its application needs to be significantly reconsidered to capture those phenomena properly. Chapter 6 (Cattani and Mastrogiorgio) proposes the possible approaches to empirical analysis that are often used in evolutionary research, with a particular emphasis on patent data. To this end and consistent with some recent developments in evolutionary literature (e.g. ‘connectivity analysis’), this chapter stresses the importance of adopting a network approach to patent data. Chapters 7 and 8 delve into some of the key implications of the new evolutionary framework. One of the main implications of punctuated equilibrium, speciation, and exaptation is that the emergence of new technologies, resources, and artefacts is highly contextual, that is, influenced by environments at the meso and macro level. The idea of environments as spaces of search for novelty is also central to other streams of evolutionary theory. By building on recent advancements in cognitive and perception
Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio
science, Chapter 7 (Felin and Kauffman) challenges the classical idea of environments and, in particular, the assumption that environments can be fully represented, exhausted, or accounted for. Accordingly, search becomes a ‘hard problem’, and a new mechanism of novelty generation is proposed on the basis of question-answer probing and theory-laden inquiries. Chapter 8 (Mastrogiorgio, Petracca, and Palumbo) takes a slightly different stance on environments. By building on recent advancements in extended cognition, this chapter reframes the whole innovation process as being constitutively embodied in the contingent interaction between actors and artefacts in the environment, thus emphasizing the role of practicality and procedural knowledge in the generation of novelty. Closing the circle, Chapter 9 (Cattani and Mastrogiorgio) examines some of the implications that have been anticipated at the beginning, particularly the importance of innovating using an option-based logic. By building on ‘redeployability’ theory, this chapter not only explains option-based logic but also discusses its limitations by focusing on the notion of ‘shadow options’, i.e. new uses or applications that are embodied in technologies, resources, and artefacts but are still awaiting recognition, and their importance for strategy and competitive advantage. Chapter 10 (Unrau and Gabora) links together many of the previous topics by discussing another important topic: the cultural evolution of creative ideas that leads to social innovation.
This book is aimed towards academic scholars of innovation and strategy who feel in tune with evolutionary theory and are willing to advance in the field. This book defines a general map of the evolutionary ideas proposed and discussed in previous research (Andriani and Cattani, 2016; Beinhocker, 2007; Cattani, 2006; Kauffman, 2000; Koppl et al., 2015; Mirowski, 1989). Owing to the vastness of the evolutionary field, we may have omitted some ideas and names. Therefore, any omissions and errors are our own responsibility. Last but not least, we benefited from the works and efforts of other authors in completing this book. This book has also benefited from the many insights received from colleagues and friends at various conferences and seminars over the years. A particular source of inspiration was the first and second ‘International Workshop on Exaptation’ held in 2009 and 2018 in Gargnano del Garda, Italy. Our final thanks go to Adam Swallow and Jenny King of Oxford University Press for their kind help, assistance, and patience during the writing process. The authors would like to thank Enago (www.enago.com) for the English language review.
Research reported in this book was partially funded by the State Research Agency (AEI)-10.13039/501100011033 Grant No. PID2019-104568GB-100.
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Andriani, P. and Carignani, G. 2014. Modular exaptation: a missing link in the synthesis of artificial form. Research Policy, 43(9): 1608–20.
Andriani, P. and Cattani, G. 2016. Exaptation as a source of creativity, innovation, and diversity in evolutionary sciences: introduction to the special section. Industrial and Corporate Change, 25(1): 115–31.
Andriani, P., Ali, A., and Mastrogiorgio, M. 2017. Measuring exaptation and its impact on innovation, search and problem-solving. Organization Science, 28(2): 320–38.
Beinhocker, E.D. 2007. The origins of wealth: evolution, complexity, and the radical remaking of economics. Harvard Business Review Press.
Carignani, G., Cattani, G., and Zaina, G. 2019. Evolutionary chimeras: a Woesian perspective of radical innovation. Industrial and Corporate Change, 28(3): 511–28.
Cattani, G. 2006. Technological preadaptation, speciation and emergence of new technologies: how Corning invented and developed fiber optics. Industrial and Corporate Change, 15(2): 285–318.
Darwin, C. 1859. On the origin of species. John Murray Eds.
Felin, T., Kauffman, S., Mastrogiorgio, A., and Mastrogiorgio, M. 2016. Factor markets, actors and affordances. Industrial and Corporate Change, 25(1): 133–47.
Gibson, J.J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Erlbaum.
Gould, S.J. and Vrba, E.S. 1982. Exaptation—a missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology, 8(1): 4–15.
Kauffman, S.A. 2000. Investigations. Oxford University Press.
Kauffman, S. 2016. Humanity in a creative universe. Oxford University Press.
Koppl, R., Kauffman, S., Felin, T., and Longo, G. 2015. Economics for a creative world. Journal of Institutional Economics, 11(1): 1–31.
Levinthal, D.A. 1998. The slow pace of rapid technological change: gradualism and punctuation in technological change. Industrial and Corporate Change, 7(2): 217–47.
Malerba, F., Nelson, R.R., Orsenigo, L., and Winter, S.G. 2016. Innovation and the evolution of industries: history friendly models. Cambridge University Press.
Mirowski, P. 1989. More heat than light. Economics as social physics: physics as nature’s economics. Cambridge University Press.
Nelson, R.R. and Winter, S.G. 1982. An evolutionary theory of economic change. Harvard University Press.
Nelson, R.R., Dosi, G., Helfat, C.E., Pyka, A., Saviotti, P., Lee, K., Dopfer, K., Malerba, F., and Winter, S.G. 2018. Modern evolutionary economics. Cambridge University Press.
Okasha, S. 2009. Causation in biology. In Beebee, H., Hitchcock, C., and Menzies, P. (eds.). The Oxford handbook of causation. Oxford University Press.
Tushman, M.L. and Anderson, P. 1986. Technological discontinuities and organizational environments. Administrative Science Quarterly, 31(3): 439–65.
New Frontiers
Punctuated Equilibrium, Speciation, and Exaptation in Innovation
Gino Cattani and Mariano Mastrogiorgio
Evolutionary theory in economics, strategy, and innovation
Since the publication of ‘An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change’ (Nelson and Winter, 1982), evolutionary thinking has grown significantly and has had a profound impact on various fields such as economics, strategy, and technological innovation (Aldrich and Ruef, 1999; Dopfer, 2005; Dosi, 2000; Helfat et al., 2007; Malerba et al., 2016; Metcalfe, 1998; Mokyr, 1990; Saviotti, 1996). Evolutionary thinking is centred on the idea that economic systems are constantly evolving and, contrary to neoclassical theory, are not in equilibrium owing to endogenous factors, such as technological innovation, which is also intrinsically evolutionary. This basic idea is not new. Marshall (1890) once argued that ‘The Mecca of the economist lies in economic biology’ (p. xxv). Despite being one of the founders of neoclassical economics, he emphasized the inherent evolutionary nature of an economic system. The other roots of the idea can be found in Veblen (1898) and later on in Schumpeter’s (1942) concept of ‘creative destruction’ and in his recognition that ‘in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process’ (p. 83). For a recent review of evolutionary thinking, we refer the reader to Nelson et al. (2018) and Murmann et al. (2003).
Despite being originally conceived as a contribution to growth economics, it is interesting to note that the book of Nelson and Winter (1982) has been highly influential in the strategy and technological innovation fields. In terms of strategy, the concept of routines and capabilities, which are central to evolutionary economic theory (e.g. Nelson and Winter, 1982), have strongly influenced the resourcebased view of the firm and the debate on
the sources of competitive advantage in highly dynamic contexts (Teece et al., 1997). In the context of technological innovation, evolutionary models have been even more impactful and are now wellestablished. As early as 1863, Butler (1863) noted that there is a Darwin among the machines because these objects undergo continuous evolution. In the 1930s, Gilfillan (1935) argued that innovation is like evolution and very much ‘resembles a biologic process’ (p. 275). Subsequently, Basalla (1988) presented a systematic theory of technological evolution that is based on historical sources. More recent evolutionary models of innovation can be found in Arthur (2009) and Ziman (2000) among others.
An overview of the current paradigm: neo-Darwinian evolution
An important paradigm that underlies the evolutionary theory of innovation is neoDarwinian evolution. As stated by Nelson et al. (2018), ‘the term “evolutionary economics” obviously carries the connotation that this orientation to economic analysis has something in common with the perspective of Darwinian evolutionary biology’ (p. 25). Today, neoDarwinian evolution is also known as ‘modern synthesis’, and this originated from the fusion of Darwin’s original formulation and Mendel’s genetic inheritance theory (Huxley, 1942; Mayr, 1942). Therefore, neoDarwinian evolution was preceded by Darwin’s original formulation and the theory of evolution of Lamarck, who can be considered the precursor of the evolutionary sciences because he was among the first to recognize evolution as the transformation of living things over time. According to Lamarck, living things actively change and learn to meet environmental challenges, and these somatic changes are passed on to subsequent generations. For example, a giraffe stretches its neck to reach a tall tree, and a longer neck is passed on to subsequent generations. In Darwin’s original formulation, the transformation of living beings over time is not the result of transmittable modification and learning but of natural selection acting on phenotypes together with more sophisticated transmission mechanisms (that were not yet understood at the time) than those assumed by Lamarck. Owing to the development of Mendelian genetics, neoDarwinian evolution began to shed light on these mechanisms.
According to neoDarwinism, the evolution of living beings is gradualist and based on the mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention; in other words, genotypes are subject to variation via recombination and mutation,
and the resulting phenotypes are subject to selection, which determines a new pool of genotypes that will be again subjected to variation, selection, and retention (Nelson, 1995). Recombination and mutation act on genes and occur during the cellular processes of meiosis and mitosis. Therefore, evolution is predominantly gene centred (Dawkins, 1976), and macroevolution arises from microevolution; this is consistent with a structuralist view (Gould, 2007). A related concept is that of adaptation, namely, the gradual change—via variation, selection, and retention—of a given trait of a living being towards a function. These processes ‘shape a characteristic for its current use’ (Dew et al., 2004: p. 72). An important meaning of adaptation refers to the process through which a given trait of the living being is designed for a specific function or the process by which we can ‘attribute the origin and perfection of this design to a long period of selection for its effectiveness in this particular role’ (Williams, 1966: p. 6).
In the innovation context, the evolutionary unit becomes a technological artefact rather than a biological organism. A genotype can be likened to a set—or string—of underlying modules arranged in an architecture that defines the interdependencies between them, whereas the phenotype is a set of observable characteristics, such as the form, behaviour, and functions of the technology. In this setting, variation via recombination or mutation consists of changes in the architecture—planned or unexpected—via several types of modular operators (Baldwin and Clark, 2000). On the other hand, selection is driven by the users and the market. Therefore, adaptation can be seen as the process through which a technology ‘gets transformed on the basis of users’ selection’, and then ‘into a marketdriven function’ (Andriani and Carignani, 2014: p. 1609). Technological adaptation has been studied using fitness landscape models (Wright, 1932), such as Kauffman’s (1993) NK model in evolutionary biology, which was introduced by Levinthal (1997) in the innovation and strategy fields (see Baumann et al., 2019).
The NK model is a genotypephenotype mapping that involves the assigning of a fitness value to each technological configuration among all possible configurations. Fitness values are the numerical values of how much a function/use of the technology is being improved via variation consisting of local or distant movements from one configuration to another. An interesting feature of the NK model is that the shape of the fitness curve is a function of the number of technological components and of the interaction among them (i.e. N and K, respectively). For instance, a higher K corresponds to a more rugged landscape, that is, technological adaptation towards a function becomes complex with a high risk of remaining trapped on a suboptimal peak. A key assumption at the basis of NK modelling and of neoDarwinian
