Innovation, which means creating new ideas or technologies, is key to power in areas like artificial intelligence (AI) and clean energy. Countries like China, the United States, and the European Union spend huge amounts on research to gain advantages. However, a new study from the Complexity Science Hub, published in Physical Review Research, explains that lasting innovation depends on certain conditions. The study stresses that innovation must pair with exnovation, the process of losing or forgetting older options, to keep going long-term. Without this balance, systems can grow too fast and fall apart.
Complexity researchers built a math model to show this. In the model, each point, called a node, stands for a possible innovation in a space of all potential ideas. Agents, like companies or living things, move through this space, finding new paths or dying out. Two fronts drive change: an innovation front that expands into new possibilities, known as the adjacent possible, and an exnovation front that removes outdated ones, called the adjacent obsolescent.
The model reveals a trade-off. More connections between innovations, making the system truss-like (a structure with many linked parts, like a bridge frame), speed up discoveries. For example, progress in AI can quickly boost other fields. But these links also make the system fragile, raising the risk of total collapse, where all progress stops.
The house of cards effect
This fragility is like building a house of cards too fast, where quick stacking leads to tumbling. The study finds a narrow sweet spot for balance, acting as a speed limit for evolution or growth. Pushing too hard in highly connected setups causes crashes.
Four outcomes emerge: runaway growth, sudden collapse, a fragile balance, or Byzantine phases, where diversity (variety of options) stays high but change is slow. In connected systems, stability shrinks, and most paths lead to failure. This suggests that real-world systems, from nature to society, survive with fewer links than expected.
Overall, the study warns that more connections do not always build strength. Instead, separate paths can help diversity thrive.