Universita’ di Udine

Departimento di Ingegneria Elettrica Gestionale e Meccanica

17 07 2006

Exaptation and the management of serendipity

Pierpaolo Andriani & Jack CohenDurham University/Warwick University

Main points

What it is and why it differs from adaptation

Exaptation plays a crucial role in the evolution of technologies (Innovation and emergence of new niches/sectors)

Exaptation precedes adaptation

Exaptation and innovation

1. What is it?

Exaptation

Microwave oven discovery: a template for innovation?

Did Edison predict this?

Arcimboldo: portrait of Rudolf II emperor of Austria (1590)

Definitions

“We suggest that such characters, evolved for other usages (or for no function at all), and later “coopted” for their current role, be called exaptations.” (Gould and Vrba 1982).

“Refers to cases in which an entity was selected for one trait but eventually ended up carrying out a related but different function” (Mokyr 1998).

"The later exploitation in a new context of an acquisition originally made in another entirely (Tattersal, 1998)

The origin of the concept

First introduced by Darwin as pre-adaptation to answer the 5% paradox raised by Mivart in his 1871 book “On the genesis of species” (See Jay Gould essay “Not necessarily a wing”)

Exaptations are enabled by ‘spandrels’: Jay Gould and Lewontin in “The spandrels of San Marco” (1979) introduce spandrels as “correlation of growth”

Jay Gould & Vrba (PaleoBiology, 1982) introduce the term ‘exaptation’. Ex-aptation and ad-aptation constitute the subclasses of aptation

Exaptation, adaptation and aptation

Gould and Vrba (1982), “Exaptation – a missing term in the science of form”, Paleobiology, vol. 8, N. 1, p.5

Limits of adaptationism

From the latin: ad + aptus = toward a fit (for a particular role)

“a feature is an adaptation only if it was built by natural selection for the function it now performs” (Jay Gould)

Based on gradualism. Consequently:

Suboptimality in fitness landscape (Kauffman, 1993) Complexity catastrophy (Kauffman, 1993) Mass extinctions (Jay Gould, 1990)

In terms of innovation, adaptation is useful to make sense of:– Incremental, market-pull innovation

But it doesn’t explain:– Radical, techn-push, disruptive innovation– Architectural innovation

Dr. Pangloss – The best of the possible worlds

Things cannot be other than they are... Everything is made for the best purpose. Our noses were made to carry spectacles, so we have spectacles. Legs were clearly intended for breeches, and we wear them

The non pre-statable phase-space of technologies

Exaptation and invention

Three fundamental ways of inventing new things:

– Creation of new science/technology (innovation as invention model)

– Transfer from one use to another (innovation as transfer model)

– Design of new architectures based on riconfiguration of existing modules (recombinant innovation or ‘brokering’ model)

Application

Function

Tool

Finality

application

Adaptive single peak fitness

landscape for specific

tool/function

Tools Functions

Co-specialisation

Degree of co-dependence of tools from context (fine-

tunedness)

Exps fall in areas with zero foreseable market potential

and generate new peaks

Exaptational phase space

Needs/wants

Traditional exptTool-based exploration: matching

existing tools with functionsPush-exapt

Need-based exploration: matching existing

functions with toolsPull-exapt

Applications: conjunction of tool and function

Microwave oven discovery: a template for innovation?

Exaptation generates niche construction

ToolsFunctions

Radar detection sector

Magnetron

Microwave oven sector

Microwave oven

Food preparation sectorExaptational (push)

trajectory

Adaptational / Exaptational

trajectory

Exaptation precedes adaptation

Time

# Diversity

• The geography of adaptational phase space is convergent toward an attractor. The phase space is ‘pre-statable’

• Adaptation is driven by natural selection

• It takes place according to traditional niche dynamics

• Exaptation has no attractors

• no niche pre-exists before the organism/technology exapts; there is no market before the tool/invention is ‘perverted’: “niche constructionism”

Adaptational (Darwinian and Lamarckian) trajectory

Bifurcation Exaptation

The dynamic of exaptation in innovation

Application

tool

function

new

old

old new

Push-expt

Ex. Microwave from magnetron

Mobile telephony masts x meteorology prediction

Pull-expt

Ex:

Champion: Ideo

Adaptation – Market-pull

Ex. Gillette progression from 1 to 3 blades

Radical invention/innovation

Ex. X-ray radiography

Horizontal and vertical exaptation

# tools

Ap

plic

atio

n

Old

New

Interchangeable parts

Assembly line

Flow Production

Exaptation and disruptive innovation model

From Clayton Christensen (1997) “The Innovator’s dilemma”

Photo titles books

??

The management of exaptation

Is exaptation manageable?

Are there rules behind contingency and serendipity?

Why certain companies and localities are persistently more innovative than others?

Why does innovation seem to autocatalyse more innovation?

Exaptation and small worlds structure

Manage structural holes

Bridging small worlds (Hargadon, 2003)

Recombinant networks

Manage module reconfiguration

Manage dynamic specialisation

Specialisation

Research program

Simulation – Research expt in different types of social networks

» random graph, scale free, modular and hierarchical nw

» Use ratio strong to weak ties (dense homogeneous flow against sparse heterogeneous flow)

– Use cellular and reconfigurative mechanisms as contexts

Empirical research– Compare and contrast cellular based and reconfiguration based

situations

– Analyse history of exceptionally innovative companies (3M, Sony, IBM, …) and track instances of expts

– Technology transfer between sectors and supply-chains

– Recombinant innovation

Our claims

Exaptation is an ubiquitous mechanism in biological and technological innovation

The emergence of biological niches and industrial sectors is due to an initial exaptation followed by adaptive diffusion. Radiation of technologies occurs at a rate determined by the coupled dance between exaptation and adaptation

Emergence of novelties is due to a combinatorial dynamics that depends on the speed with which tools/traits are exposed to new contexts

Important variables are form, function and context

We are accustomed to adaptation, which assumes convergence of structure towards better function. Initially, however, at the root of any adaptive trajectory it is usual for a structure to have been subverted – perverted – to a new function: what Gould and Vrba called “exaptation”. Generally this has been regarded as contingent, serendipitous. We believe that “complexity” rather than reductionist models, particularly plotting the geography of exaptational phase space, suggests several regularities that could be exploited to explain puzzling biological innovations and perhaps to develop a new strategy for technological/industrial innovation. Recombinant innovation rather than mutation driven innovation characterises both technology and biology. The driver of exaptation is not only function or form, but context

Thank you

Open for collaboration on exaptational research